How do I get XML from a variable into a DataSet?

You can use the System.IO.StringReader class to get XML from a variable into a DataSet. For example, if you have a string variable named EmployeeXml that contains XML, you can get it into a DataSet as follows:

In C#:

DataSet ds = new DataSet();
ds.ReadXml(new XmlTextReader(new StringReader(employeeXML)));

In VB .NET:

Dim ds As New DataSet()
ds.ReadXml(New XmlTextReader(New StringReader(employeeXML)))