One of the usual starting points for me in a design is the flow of information. That usually leads me to creating a set of XML Schemas for the information flow. This works well until I need to start developing code. In the past this has been a little tiresome to create (and recreate as the design evolves) the bridge between xml and the application.

This problem seems to be rapidly going away both in the Java and .Net environments, in Java I am using XMLBeans which once you get it installed and working provides a slick and easy way to map between schema and Java. In the .Net world I have been using a tool called xsd that is part of Microsoft .Net toolkit.

On the two approaches XMLBeans seems to be the most polished and functional but it is great to have similar functionality in both environments to improve productivity and reduce the drudgery.