>> 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.

DataChannel, the company I now work for, wrote a Java version of the IE5 XML parser in partnership with Microsoft. You can download this parser for free at http://datachannel.com. You have to interface to it in Java, but of course that solves your portable/platform issue.