"New" XML Datatype for MSSQL Server 2005

[Chris]

Dear all,

I thought I'd be clever and use the "new" XML datatype introduced with MSSQL Server 2005 to store the contents of some XML files (about 13kB each). However when I inserted the file contents into the database and then read them back out again, the file sized had decreased by about 30% and I could no longer read the file. However if I selected the VARCHAR(max) datatype the XML file was stored and retrieved fine.

Has anyone used the XML datatype to store XML files in SQL Server 2005? I read that saving it as an XML datatype allowed the database to check for file integrity and made searching for XML data easier and faster - is this the case - if not I'll just go back to using the VARCHAR(max) datatype since I know it works?

Thanks for any help - Chris.