I didn't have the descriptor files because it wasn't an officially supported API. And that happens, lots! Often times people aren't interested in nailing down

I didn't have the descriptor files because it wasn't an officially supported API. And that happens, lots! Often times people aren't interested in nailing down their API enough to 'officially' publish an interface.. XML makes it easy for you to use it anyways. Parsing XML doesn't include lots and lots of code, at least not for me. As I said, the amount of code to parse a Proto built class into my own datastructure is almost identical to me doing it from a DOM tree save for some type conversion. The other plus is that proto buffers involve firing up those tools and incorporating them into your project. How often do you just want something really simple, say the current temp in a zip code? That's a few lines of code to pull out via XML, without the trouble of pulling down the proto buffer definition, building the classes for your language etc..