Retrieving a MySQL recordset as XML

Hello I want to write a function that will take any SQL query as a parameter, and generate XML that represents the recordset. e.g. "SELECT * FROM Customers" returns: <recordset> <record id="1" name="Mr Smith" purchases="2"/> <record id="2" name="Mr Jones" purchases="25"/> <record id="3" name="Mr Davis" purchases="7"/> </recordset> There are two approaches I think. One is to use the XML DOM, the other is simply to join lots of strings together. What is the best approach? Thanks (and this is my first post to a newsgroup, and my first post to this one, so excuse me if I've missed something vital!) cheers ian ;-)