mapping (different)XML(formats) to a database table

how can i map xml file(s) of different formats to a table in my database say for example i have a table called Person

FirstName nvarchar(50),
LastName nvarchar(50),
Address  nvarchar(500)

i have to map xml files submitted by users to the fields of Person, the xml files can be in different formats say for example one user submits in the following format

<Person>

<Names>
<FirstName>john</FirstName>
<LastName>smith</LastName>
</Names>

<Names>
<FirstName>john</FirstName>
<LastName>smith</LastName>
</Names>


</Person>

and another user submits it in the following format

<Person>
<PersonalInfo>

<Names>
<FirstName>john</FirstName>
<LastName>smith</LastName>
</Names>
.
.
.
<PersonalInfo>
</Person>

how can i device a solution that will handle different cases (different xml formats), so that if a user submits a xml file in whatever format i just have to tell the format to my aplication and its values will automatically gets mapped to the said table... im using visual studio 2010 as an IDE and C#.NET, i hope have narrated the problem well enough...

please advice...

Since I don't how dynamic this should be (meaning how often you will change the mappings) or how many different XMLs do u have I will suggest you to map the table(s) to a common class using your preferred ORM and create class instances using LinqToXml (which is very easy). One method or class per XML structure.

There is a sample here for the LinqToXml -> http://www.switchonthecode.com/tutorials/introduction-to-linq-simple-xml-parsing

Also, if you don´t want to use it and are using .NET 4 I created a simple library to produce dynamic objects from a XML string. You can take a look at it here -> https://github.com/tucaz/XmlToObjectParser

1. you can identify the schema you are acquiring and use appropriate XSLT File to convert it to the latest version. Note: you should make something generic to identify the schema (e.g. )

2. (I Like 1. better) create an Software Adapter interface that changes the mappings (Like add-ins work)