The comment about web services is unrelated to storing it as xml/varbinary on SQL Server.
What I was pointing out is that behind the scenes when you set up a web service parameter as an object, it is serialized to XML on transfer. You can specify binary serialization for WCF, so the binary data represents the object.
These may help you
http://forums.asp.net/t/1507343.aspxhttp://www.eggheadcafe.com/articles/20020929.asp