A method for communicating data includes selecting a portion of data for communication to a remote computer, with the data portion in device-dependent format and comprising at least an integer, a real number, or a binary value. An XML tree of values is generated from the selected data portion and the XML tree comprises the selected portion of data with each value associated with one data type. The XML tree of values is bundled into a portable buffer communicated to the remote computer for processing the data portion in a second device-dependent format.