>The problem with XML is that it can't **automatically** determine types. An element can be a string, a number, a date and without an explicit schema an XML parser has no idea how to treat an element.

That isn't a **problem** because XML was designed to be flexible and free-flowing, allowing an application of information at any point depending on data needs. Standards can be easily setup. For example, make "n" tags numeric, "d" tags for date, etc.

It's flexible and wholly adaptive while being people-friendly.

>Once a schema is defined though it can be very fast because it can start making assumptions which is likely why XML serialization tends to be faster than JSON which has to pretty much parse a document char by char in order to determine what the next type will be.
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>I too need to deal with JSON *and* XML all the time, but I've come to greatly appreciate JSON for its type simplicity instead of the type and schema hell that is XML... When working with XML data coming from multiple sources (ie. your app doesn't own it) there's almost always some sort of problem in the translation of the data in my experience which is frustrating.
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>+++ Rick ---

JSON has its place in data processing and interchange. XML is more people-friendly.