ASA SQL User's Guide
  Using XML in the Database
    Obtaining query results as XML
      Using the FOR XML clause to retrieve query results as XML

FOR XML and binary data

When you use the FOR XML clause in a SELECT statement, regardless of the mode used, any BINARY, LONG BINARY, IMAGE, and VARBINARY columns are output as attributes or elements that are automatically represented in base64-encoded format.

If you are using OPENXML to generate a result set from XML, OPENXML assumes that the types BINARY, LONG BINARY, IMAGE, and VARBINARY, are base64-encoded and decodes them automatically.

For more information about OPENXML, see OPENXML function [String].