It's bad for data storage, but it's great for passing hierarchical parameters to stored procedures. It's also great for retrieval of hierarchical data. Storin

It's bad for data storage, but it's great for passing hierarchical parameters to stored procedures. It's also great for retrieval of hierarchical data. Storing the XML in a column, that's just dumb. If I did that I would only ever treat it as a binary blob, same as any file. When you start using the db's XML query support to query that column, that's when you get into trouble and need to rethink your design.