XML isn't such a great way to store data. That's what databases are for. Instead, think of it as a way to move data, or distribute it, in such a way that it can be picked up and used by a variety of applications without costly translations between different data formats. XML is a way of representing data in a very generic fashion, so that it can be viewed or manipulated by any other application supporting XML. If this is of little use to you with your project, you probably don't want to use XML.