For those of you who've got into it you'll know that test driven development is great. It gives you the confidence to change code safe in the knowledge that if something breaks you'll know about it. Except for those bits you don't know how to test. Until now XML has been one of them. Oh sure you can use "<stuff></stuff>".equals("<stuff></stuff>"); but is that really gonna work when some joker decides to output a <stuff/>? -- damned right it's not ;-)