When you use the FOR XML clause in a SELECT statement, regardless of the mode used, any BINARY, LONG BINARY, IMAGE, or 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 system procedure.