XML is a very ‘wordy’ format. Since it is self documenting a lot more information is sent with each message than just the raw data. For example, with HL7 the patient name is sent as…
|lname^fname^mname|
in XML that would be
The HL7 example is 19 bytes. The XML example is 84 bytes.
It will depend alot on the amount of data you need to process. If the volume is such that mulitplying the raw data times 4 would overload the interface then XML may not be the way to go.
Scott
