Maxx Cairn wrote:
> I am new to XML, but have immersed myself in it pretty thoroughly for
> the past few weeks.
> 
> I have created (in XML) a directory for an organization that I belong
> to. There won't be a server connection, so I thought that one benefit
> would be the ability to do sorting and filtering dynamically on the
> client side. But apparently that only works reliably in IE.

No, Firefox does it as well, but both browsers support (or fail to
support) different aspects of XSLT. Generally speaking, do it on the
server: browser support for XML really isn't usable for production yet.

> I am really struggling to find the benefits of using XML if the data is
> not intended to be exchanged with others. 

But the XML data *will* exchange OK. It's the in-browser processing
which is causing the problem.

In any event, sending the whole directory to the browser to sort out 
seems like overkill. Doing it server-side would seem to be the answer.

> It seems like I am better off
> doing it the old-fashioned way -- storing the data in a db and
> outputting HTML files.

For a large directory system that's probably correct.

> The whole world is moving to XML, so I'm sure I'm missing something.
> Can anybody shed some light? Thanks in advance.

XML was designed for text. Its use for data was an afterthought, and
there are applications where it may not be suitable.

///Peter
-- 
XML FAQ: http://xml.silmaril.ie