Have you tried binary serialization ?

i use this to serialize anny .Net object to a sql server database (  Classes
, structures  ) when i deserialize them i get them  back in the original  
state .


<code >
Imports System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary

add this attribute to the serializable class
<Serializable()> _

--- methods

''' <summary>
   ''' maakt van een byte array een object  
   ''' </summary>
   ''' <param name="Argdata">de ruwe binaire data </param>
   ''' <returns></returns>
   Private Function DeSerialize(ByVal Argdata() As Byte) As Object
       Dim m As New MemoryStream(Argdata)
       Dim b As New BinaryFormatter()
       m.Seek(0, 0) 'start
       Return b.Deserialize(m)
   End Function
   ''' <summary>
   ''' Maakt van een Object (foo) een byte array .
   ''' </summary>
   ''' <param name="Argdata">argdata als foo object</param>
   ''' <returns></returns>
   Private Function Serialize(ByVal Argdata As Object) As Byte()
       Dim b As New BinaryFormatter
       Dim m As New MemoryStream
       b.Serialize(m, Argdata)
       m.Seek(0, 0) 'start
       Return m.ToArray
   End Function

</code >

With these methods i could store  ( until sofar )  every .Net object in SQL
server
(  you could also write the binary data   out to a file and read it back
from a file )

I hope this helps you in the right direction

regards

Michel Posseth [MCP]