Ah, but that's the rub! XML is not a "standard" here because the metadata schema for any factory we create is left to implementation. So we could both be using XML to store metadata but dissimilar structures makes our work incompatible without an adapter. The code I write to search or iterate my schema will likely need serious mods for use with your schema. If we use differeing versions of the MSXMLDOM (or whatever) then that's also problematic. So XML is better than comma-delimited ASCII in this respect, but it's not all that it could be.

We have similar types of problems in VFP, though less severe. The table structures used by application metadata are left to implementation, but at least we can all agree that we'll all USE a table and LOCATE or SEEK to find the record we need, and we've got compile-on-the-fly, EVAL(), and functions to peek and poke property pairs from memo fields, etc. Moreover there are plenty of native tables in VFP, like BROWSER.DBF and .VCX/.SCX structures for example, that can be used for the 99% use case for any application metadata.

The fact that VFP has a data engine, and that system metadata uses the same data engine, well that's just killer. SQL Server does this also, though for some reason any metadata access in SQL server seems to take hunderds of time longer to process. MSDE is, of course, no better. (I'm talking about the eternity of time it takes to access metadata "objects" in Enterprise Manager and Query analyzer). Were that not enough, string handling sucks in SQL/MSDE.

I'm not saying you can't use XML for metadata, just that it's not as fast or handy as a .DBF, and that it looks to me like there might be some interesting correlation between metadata standards and the cohesiveness of developer communities.

**--** Steve

>Steve,
>
>The 'local' data engine for .Net is XML. You can persist config info or object stuff in XML. Actually, ASP.Net support a config.web XML table. You can create a factory in .Net using the Reflection classes.
>
>IS this as good as VFP, maybe not. Is it different, no doubt. Is it doable, certainly.
>
>BOb