Get a DataSet returned from SOAP as XML?

Question

We have a .NET 2 SOAP web service meant for consumption by another app that is internal to our organisation. The web service returns a .NET dataset like so:

public System.Data.DataSet GetStatementFor(string contractList,
  System.DateTime startDate, System.DateTime endDate)

Now in one of the use cases it is necessary to get to the DataSet object's XML. Now obviously the DataSet is being returned via XML in any case, so I was wondering if it is possible to just use the XML that represents it in SOAP. Normally the XML is wrapped into a DataSet object which I will then need to serialize once again. Can I skip these last two steps and still return a DataSet for the cases where it makes sense?

Answer 1

No, the WebService transfers a DataSet in SOAP formatting, which is different form the format DataSet.WriteXml() uses.

Answer 2

I'm confused what you want. DataSet will be serialized to XML and deserialized on the other end back into a DataSet why do you need to care about the underlaying XML?