Are you guys 42 years old?

There is no doubt that you are spot on.  But how do you convince those who live by "muck"-ing up the database?

There is no xml datatype in SQL 2000.  So I think that the varchar(max) is the correct response.

Why don't you let the database structure handle this with additional fields for date, type of entity (order, invoice, etc.), unique id(generated from SQL Server)?  The unique entity number can then...