Hi Chris. I tried this sort of thing once and if I remember right, the error was that the user control wasn't being instanciated in a <form runat='server'> server form. Is that what's happening for you? What benefit are you looking for in returning the rendered control as a string? In my case I was attempting to ultimately have the .ascx rendered in the web page after inspecting the string. I ended up just adding the usercontrol to the custom control's Controls collection and letting normal ASP.NET rendering do its thing. Sorry I can't be more helpful here.

Thanks, that worked. I was trying not to need a DataSet, but I ended up needing one for another reason anyway. Also, I was trying to use the XML services and get a table back instead of the (proper) other way around of creating a table by reading the XML.