I'm glad you brought up OPENXML Graham. In the past I've used both methods (XQUERY, OPENXML) to process XML data.

MSDN suggests using OPENXML statements with XML data columns. But I can't see how this is possible and how it could be efficient.

If I have an XML column with XML indexes created on it would I want to pass column values to a sp_xml_preparedocument stored procedure and then use OPENXML statements?