Well an XML document does not have records or columns, instead it has nodes like element nodes, attribute nodes, comment nodes, text nodes. You can read out such nodes and determine the names if you want. Here is an example that recursively processes the elements nodes, starting with the root element and then processing the child elements:

With the XML being

<root>
  <foo>
    <bar>bar 1</bar>
  </foo>
  <foo>
    <bar>bar 2</bar>
  </foo>
</root>

this C# snippet

        static void Main()
        {
            XDocument doc = XDocument.Load(@"..\..\XMLFile1.xml");
            ShowChildren(doc.Root);
        }
        static void ShowChildren(XElement el)
        {
            ShowChildren(el, "");
        }
        static void ShowChildren(XElement el, string indent)
        {
            Console.WriteLine(indent + "Element named '{0}'.", el.Name);
            foreach (XElement childEl in el.Elements())
            {
                ShowChildren(childEl, indent + "  ");
            }
        }

 outputs

Element named 'root'.
  Element named 'foo'.
    Element named 'bar'.
  Element named 'foo'.
    Element named 'bar'.

If that does not help then you need to show us samples of the XML you want to process and tell us exactly which nodes you are interested in.