>Is anyone using XML for any specific application solution? How did it help and were the pros and cons? I'd also like to know how people think XML will help in their application development and architecture based on what the know or plan to use XML.

I am using XML as the transport for a VFP web-based app. The application is written for municipal bond dealers and serves as a calculator/ calendar for upcoming bond deals. Bond structure and details are stored on the web server, and when the app is started, the "calendar" is downloaded. After selecting a bond from the calendar, the bond's structure, bid conditions, and other details are downloaded from the server. All data is sent via XML.

I am using subclasses of Rick's Web Connection framework and a modified version of his wwXML class to construct and send the XML on the server, and the same modified XML class and the XMLDOM object to parse and recreate the cursors on the client.

With methods in my WC framework, I can get a VFP dataset on the client side from server data, with all structure info preserved in just a couple of lines of code. I have put together methods that basically let me use the equivalent of SQLPassthrough on the client to get a cursor:

lcSQL = "SELECT Customer.* FROM Customer WHERE Customer.LName = 'Moore'"

IF oXML.GetCursor(lcSQL, "Customers")
	GO TOP IN Customers
ENDIF

I know there would have been a few other ways to do this same thing, but IMHO, XML is by far the cleanest and coolest. I have other more specialized methods on the server that will return XML documents built based on form variables, because much of the functionality built into the client side calculator program is also built into the web site, and both web pages and the app can use the exact same server code.

XML hasn't made possible the impossible, but it has sure made the difficult much easier.

My one complaint still is the lack of a completely portable parser. We are currently distributing the patch that updates IE 4.01's msXML.dll to the latest, but this does nothing for bond shops who don't have IE 4.01. This is going to cause problems. We're looking for 3rd party parser alternatives. Since all XML parsing is handled in one place by the XML object, switching from the MS parser to another won't be too big of a hassle. But I would still rather MS give us an MSXML.dll that can be used on any machine.