XML vs X

[Anon]

What are the main advantages / disadvantages of using XML as a means of datastore over say Mysql?

or have I missed the XML point? I have read a few articles about it and can parse the a document etc but I cann't see any advantage over a database app.

please help

a rather confused XML Convertee

regards

Ian

[Anon]

let's say you run a news site, and want to let other sites include your news on theirs.. would you give a public mysql access to everybody? hmm guess not. well, XML can be a nice way to share those news, and let the other sites parse it as they want. this is just a very simple example of what can xml be used for.

[Anon]

Ah!! a public kinda thing.
I see.

Imagination lacking I think.

How efficent is it to store whole news articles (to stick with your example) in the xml documen. I noticed slashdot.orgs slashdot.xml contained links to a perl script with what looks like a news ID I assume this is the piont a Database server would kick in.