Problem with encoding

[Vipsis]

Hi!
I'm a web services developer and there are some bugs about encoding. Point is that my web service is using people from countries with different encodings (russian - windows-1251, baltic - windows-1257, ect).
At first i encoding problem solved easely because data from database returned into dataset type. I used code like this (simpled):

...
Dim Com As New SqlCommand
Dim name As String
Dim reader As SqlDataReader = oCmd.ExecuteReader(CommandBehavior.SequentialAccess)
Do While reader.Read()
      Dim spaceByteArray(0) As Byte
 
      'detect region language
      If _region.Contains("RU") Then 'if russian
            'read 'name'column data
            retval = reader.GetBytes(5, 0, outbyte, 0, 255)
            name = Encoding.GetEncoding("windows-1251").GetString(outbyte).Trim()
      End If
Loop
...
 

I read each table row and column into byte array and then encoded into needed encoding.
But now i must encoding data what are returned from "FOR XML EXPLICIT" structure - XML document.
Question is - is it possible read (ExecuteXmlReader) concrete XML nodes and their values into byte array when reading from database how it do "ExecuteReader"?
Or there is other way to encode when reading, because when data is returned and writed into XMLDocument variable it is impossible to recognize and change it.
Thanks!

[Plater]

Any string you can get, like from an XML file, can be converted to bytes with the Encoding ( .GetBytes() )
Once you have the bytes, you can re-convert to a string with a different Encoding type.

Note: There maybe a more direct way to do this, but that two step process should work.

[Vipsis]

There is that problem, that I must encode string then it is between database and XMLDataDocument variable, how I done with "name" variable into my example: read into byte array output from DB and after encoding convert it to string (with needed encoding) and only then assign to the "name".
If I encode string later, this specific encoder not recognize exact character code, because specific code are automatically coverted to Unicode, which are little bit different and result are question marks...

[Plater]

Have you used the System.Text.Encoding.Unicode object?

[Vipsis]

Have you used the System.Text.Encoding.Unicode object?

Yes, I used it, but without result.
Name (for example) are stored in DB how it must be - clear Russian and Baltic characters.
But when they are stored into VB.NET String data type variable, they represents as question marks, or some freaky symbols that aren't that I need.
When I didn't used "FOR XML EXPLICIT", I encoding done "by hand" at time when data has been read from DB.
It seems, that there no other way, I must stay at DataSet SequentialAccess :(
But now are one more question - is in Studio 2008 function like SQL "FOR XML EXPLICIT"?

[Plater]

Have you tried using the DataTable's abilities to auto-populate from an XML file?

[Vipsis]

Have you tried using the DataTable's abilities to auto-populate from an XML file?

:) No I'm not tried do do this, because I do not need it. Function output must be well encoded XML file. I need convert something encoded (dataset, for example) TO not FROM XML.

[Plater]

Well I'm no longer sure what you are doing?
A DataTable is capabale of writing TO and FROM an XML file, I would think you could supply an encoding scheme to it?