How to solve “unable to switch the encoding” error when inserting XML into SQL Server

Question

I\'m trying to insert into XML column (SQL SERVER 2008 R2), but the server\'s complaining:

System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException (0x80131904):
XML

Answer 1

You are serializing to a string rather than a byte array so, at this point, any encoding hasn't happened yet.

What does the start of "messageToLog" look like? Is the XML specifying an encoding (e.g. utf-8) which subsequently turns out to be wrong?

Edit

Based on your further info it sounds like the string is automatically converted to utf-8 when it is passed to the database, but the database chokes because the XML declaration says it is utf-16.

In which case, you don't need to serialize to utf-8. You need to serialize with the "encoding=" omitted from the XML. The XmlFragmentWriter (not a standard part of .Net, Google it) lets you do this.