If you use DataSet.GetXML, it returns the Dataset in the form of a XML string. Using Dataset.ReadXml will populate a Dataset from an XML string (or a stream).
Lastly, your premise for the tip itself is flawed. Ninety nine times out of 100, a report is indeed SUPPOSED to query the database. What you're doing is storing what amounts to a snapshot of the database, duplicating the data, and thus unnecessarily consuming the user's disk space (or worse, the server's disk space).
Of course, I'm not familiar with your requirements, but a properly formed query will always generate the same report, so there's really no point saving the report data to a disk file.
Just sayin...
I've been paid as a programmer since 1982 with experience in Pascal, and C++ (both self-taught), and began writing Windows programs in 1991 using Visual C++ and MFC. In the 2nd half of 2007, I started writing C# Windows Forms and ASP.Net applications, and have since done WPF, Silverlight, WCF, web services, and Windows services.
My weakest point is that my moments of clarity are too brief to hold a meaningful conversation that requires more than 30 seconds to complete. Thankfully, grunts of agreement are all that is required to conduct most discussions without committing to any particular belief system.
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