Sean Lange (3/1/2013)
It is fast on the sql side of things but I have never really been convinced that applications gain much benefit because of all the extra data that has to be passed.
+1000 to that!
Shredding an XML parameter takes a bit fewer resources than parsing a CSV with DelimitedSplit8K and is even a bit faster. An XML parameter also allows you to easily break the 8k barrier. Heh... of course, with XML bloat, you almost have to. 😀
The other thing that people fail to consider is all the other resources involved. Like the "pipe". It's much more expensive on the pipe to pass XML than it is CSV or TSV. It's also more expensive on the I/O of the server. Being I/O bound is much more difficult to fix than optimizing some code.
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.