Okay, I actually want the max size of the column and I think that information is missing in the XML. The XML looks something like this. Max size of the column is used by the XSL to print the data. For datatypes like int, numeric, datetime I can manage the column lenght, problem arises only when its of type string, char etc It has the column name, type, minOccurs. I think the max size of the column is missing, do I need to try some other method, or any other argument? Thanks, -- modified at 16:24 Friday 5th May, 2006