"GMG" <nospam@nospam> wrote in message
news:ePi60$VVGHA.424@T......
> I was thinking of cloning the XMLDocument when first loaded and later
> comparing that Cloned (original) XMLDocument to the working version
looping
> through each element. What do you think of this approach ?
>
> "Umut Alev" <UmutAlev@d...> wrote in message


That's quite expensive and messy.  The fact is it will be your code that
actually changes the element as a result of a user interaction.  You could
keep track of what has changed at the point the change is made.  For example
an additional attribute indicating the element is 'dirty' or maintaining an
array of XML elements that have been modified.

My preference revolves around the fact that an XML structure ultimately
needs to be persisted to a set of relational records.  I reserve the
attribute 'action' as an indicator to a change and the action needed
'update', 'new', 'delete' but this happens more at a 'record' level than a
'field' level (using the terms lightly).  I also use the action value of
'dirty' to mark parent nodes in a heirachy having descendants that have had
some change.

It's then a fairly simple thing to extract only changed content from the XML
for posting back to the server.

Anthony.