title: XML text in Varchar(max) mysterious question mark
body: <p>I have a function in a VB .NET  class library, which inserts XML text into a VARCHAR(MAX) column.
  The column results in an extra "?" at the front of the data in the column. I do not want that character in my data.</p>
  
  <p>The column data starts like :</p>
  
  <pre><code>  ?&lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?&gt;&lt;Registration xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"....
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The insert function is :</p>
  
  <pre><code>INSERT INTO Table (Data) OUTPUT Inserted.ID VALUES (@Data)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The table has 2 columns, Data and ID.</p>
  
  <p>Am I doing something wrong. The XML is created by the .Net XmlSerializer.</p>
  
  <p>Thanks</p>