XML attribute vs XML element

Question

At work we are being asked to create XML files to pass data to another offline application that will then create a second XML file to pass back in order to update some of ou

Answer 1

Use elements for data and attributes for meta data (data about the element's data).

If an element is showing up as a predicate in your select strings, you have a good sign that it should be an attribute. Likewise if an attribute never is used as a predicate, then maybe it is not useful meta data.

Remember that XML is supposed to be machine readable not human readable and for large documents XML compresses very well.