>Another big use is returning recordsets which XML lends itself to. You don't need to have ADO installed. You don't "need" a parser since any language with string manipulation can encode and decode them...

FWIW, I'm kind of changing my thinking on that one <s>... I too have a bunch of routines that can deal with decoding XML manually, but realistically there are lots of potential issues here. For one 'real' XML is UTF-8 encoded and not ANSI text like we generate in VFP. This means any extended characters won't come across properly. You can of course generate non-encoded XML, but at the same time you can run into problems with other applications that do use a parser and try to consume that XML and expect UTF-8. This is actually quite a mess because even Microsoft isn't being consistent with the parser the HTTP components and the way XSL works (just for a few examples). I've had a number of problems with this in Service based applications.

Just something to watch out for.

>We find more uses all of the time.

Ain't that the truth. I was giving a presentation yesterday on distributed applications and XML and as I was preparing I realized how I'd come full circle from thinking XML might be useful to being indispensible when building distributed applications. XML has found its way into just about every aspect of newer applications I've built and not in one would I call it overkill... It's the kind of technology that grows on you, because of its simplicity and inherent flexibility to adapt to the structures involved.

One can only wonder - why didn't we think of this much sooner????

+++ Rick ---