There's no need to have the Parent and the Tag elements if you have the
universal table already defined. Couldn't they have just used the
[blah!blah!blah!] syntax and did something like this:

SELECT
a.custid as [Customer!Id],
a.custname as [Customer!CustomerName],
b.ordernumber as [Order!OrderNumber],
c.partnumber as [Part!PartNumber]
FROM
Customer A, Order B, OrderPart C
WHERE
A.custid = B.custid AND
B.ordernumber = C.ordernumber
ORDER BY custid, custname, ordernumber, partnumber

In the above example, you wind up with the ultimate table with only one
frigging query, not FOR EXPLICIT abortion of N number of queries
stitched together with the union... from there, you can go, left to
right, assuming that each column is either an element or an attribute,
which you can get by looking at the bang bang hack "Customer!Id".

Hello stork,

That's a might big if for most users. And as you know, the FOR XML EXPLICIT
really is working of its own/

Well, that's one opinion. It say it sucks because it is usable. Crap is unusable.

Since I have no idea what your definition of right and obvious are, I'll
present what works in 2005 and allow you to draw your own inferences.