Class Object -> XML -> Database???

It seems fairly straightforward to serialize a custom object to an XML file
(saved in the file system) but it is wide open on how to serialize that
object as a stream and then get it into a database. I've seen streamwriters,
memorystreams, etc. (all textwriters) used where these XML objects are
eventually converted to string and stored to a database for SQL 2000 and
maybe as native XML in SQL 2005 (although I haven't seen examples of the
latter).

Is there a preferred way (less coding, faster, memory efficient, etc.) to
create an object serialized as XML and prepare it for storage in a database?

Thanks for any help.