>I know how to use the XMLDOM to parse XML files/strings but it seems overkill for that little job, What do you think? Is there a lighter piece of VFP code for parsing simple XML?

You could probably write something faster fairly easily depending on the complexity of your exception information. But I usually don't hesitate to use the parser even for small stuff because it's pretty fast to instantiate and to load a small document. Unless your small documents are being loaded in a tight loop (their not in your situation), I wouldn't worry about overhead.