This article was a great help.

My relational mindset is stubbornly resisting the hierarchical nature of xml and I was having a rough time with even the simplest operations. This article helped me shred a fairly complex xml document that I've been having issues with. My only problem now is that it only seems to be bring in the first instance of a node sequence (ie - if a productID can have multiple itemIDs, my shred only brings in the first ItemID). I suspect this is where the "cross apply" operator comes into play and I'm sure I'll figure it out with some practice.

I'll never be an xml guru, but with the information in this article I no longer consider it an achilles heel. Thanks!