[Groxx]

The company I work for has to digest a handful of XML and SOAP protocols. Theoretically, they all conform to spec A or B, and/or define their own subset of that spec with an XML language definition. There should be like 3 or 4 pieces of code which would handle every format they offer.

Practically: ctrl-C, ctrl-V, and call them when it doesn't work. More often than not it's either A) incorrect documentation, or B) you hit a bug (yes, this means their sample-code doesn't work. It happens frequently). A good chunk of our request-data builders are simply string manipulators, because some of the APIs we call are nitpicky about the order of XML attributes in a tag.

I laugh when people tell me XML works better "because it's a standard".