Wow, XML is a pig, isn’t it? Don’t get me wrong; it does everything I need it to do in describing multi-faceted data, but it’s a pretty steep learning curve.
At first, I used XPath and a lot of coded validation. Then I finally invested time in learning XML Schemas (XSDs) and that helped a lot because I could validate the entire document and, only when I knew it was valid, start pulling data out of it. At around the same time, I stumbled upon LINQ to XML and this shortened the code substantially. Now, all I had to do was validate the document against the XSD and, if it passed, get to decoding it via LINQ and we’re done and dusted [...]