>
> The question stands:
>
> What can we learn about the design of XML from an XML web service
> developer's modeling a null value as the string "null"?
>
I think the only thing we can learn is that there are very many bad programmers in our profession, and some of them misuse XML.
With a bit more analysis we could try and determine some of the factors in XML that tend to lead bad programmers to misuse it. From my experience, I don't think this particular blunder would feature in the top 10 list of common errors.
Michael Kay
Saxonica