Corba, Midas, XML and Soap

A good afternoon to you all.

Im currently looking to compare and contrast various methods of data
retrieval in C# .net.

Basically Im looking to see the best way of pulling back data records from a
webservice and through asp.

Can I pull back an xml record and then do further work with it later on,
perhaps as part of a recordset of somesort.

As you can see, my knowledge on this is somewhat limited.

I've found very little on the subject and wondered if anyone had any
comments.

Any help would be appreciated.

Phil