I agree with the intent (and do the very same thing myself). But wouldn't you agree that it would be simpler AND more powerful to have more fully-implemented "table" support?

We should be able to have table variables (client and server), specify table values (whole tables) as literals, do equality comparisons, etc. Just like A REAL TYPE.

Then we could just pass a table as an argument.

Since the industry gave us XML instead (sigh!), I use that as a work-around too.

As to the "textual encoding" of it, I agree it should be somewhat terse. But that is not to be confused with the "value" of the parameter. For example, both of these "encodings" could be used to specify the same "value":

<searchtypes><type name="green"></type><type name="blue"></type><type name="purple"></type></searchtypes>

Or...

searchtypes ( string name ) {

green;

blue;

purple;

}

These are both the same "value" semantically. I prefer the second encoding and it's too bad we got XML instead.