Well the problem is our data supplier wants to be able to send us record-update information in XML, and wants to able to distinguish an empty XML element from a missing element. i.e.

The following means don't change the date:-

< Record>

< /Record>

The following means set the date to NULL

< Record>

< ThisDate></ThisDate>

< /Record>

Unfortunately the SSIS XML Data Flow Source sees both these as NULL.

Any suggestions how I can write an SSIS package that sees these two forms as different?