Hey, I''m an xmldb newb, as I expect most are since xquery only got nailed a few months ago. I know nothing more than reading around the subject and a couple of hours tinkering with sleepycats offering. Enough though to make me realise the potential of an xml database though. I dont really have a spare supercomputer to parse xml documents to compete with a relational database on speed but it would have some cool features. Not being as familar with the activerecord source as I should be... would it ever be possible to write an xmldb adaptor for activerecord or is it just too SQL. Prehaps ActiveDocument? ...If only I was mark shuttleworth. -h