Hi Phil,

> > XML is human readable crap used to exchange data between systems
> > that don't need human readable crap with too much bandwidth to spend :-)
>
> Regardless of if you like XML or not, it has been a godsend in the

industry I

> work in. Our systems need to work with a lot of other systems, and in
> previous years each system had its own 'interface', as did ours, and a

lot,

> and I mean a lot, of work was needed to get everything working together.
> Since man+dog has now adopted XML, as log as all the systems read/write

XML,

> life is a lot, lot easier, almost painless.

Oh sure it helped. But it's not like there wasn't a standard before XML.
Lot's of industries have their own standard (eg, the financiele world, banks
and so on) that everybody could get a specification from...

XML isn't different from that - the format is the same, but what the data
means is different for everyone... So the one thing that might have changed
is the reader/write code... the actual meaning is still a
per-company/industry
specification.

> Whilst I am a strong beliver in 'systems' reading/writing XML, I am not
> convinced that this is something a Database engine should do.

XML was invented for data interchange, let it stay there...

With regards,

Martijn Tonies
Database Workbench - developer tool for InterBase, Firebird, MySQL & MS SQL
Server.
Upscene Productions
http://www.upscene.com