In response to iapetus and dcpeterson, and all of the other thoughful responders...

Thank you both for your well thought out responses. While I don't intellectually agree with every point you make, I commend both of you for taking the time to discuss them.

Special thanks to iapetus for thoroughly addressing the statements I made in my article. I do feel that, in the article and subsequent discussion, I've done my best to answer his or her questions.

I would be honored to work with either of you someday, if for no other good reason than to have someone around to tell me that I'm wrong 🙂

Alas, I will not convince you of my position. Hopefully, this discussion was helpful to the readers of this site.

Oh, and just for the record, I've been coding professionally for 23 years. I have a degree in computer science, a background in mathematics, and graduate-level education in database theory, set mathematics, human-computer interaction and two areas of artifical intelligence. I've coauthored two technology books, one of them on SQL Server (although it wasn't as successful as "SQL Server in 21 days," 😉

You see... not all XML proponents are nitwits.

With greatest respect,

nickmalik