My question, then, is this: Is it considered a "bug" in Derby if insertion of the same XML value by the user can lead to different data
I'm not much of an expert in this area, but it's my understanding that, in the XML world, when people are trying to discuss "equivalency" of two XML documents, there is a concept that can be used called the "info set". This is supposed to be an abstract definition of the XML contents which is independent of any particular serialization, and hence avoids awkwardnesses like the ones you describe.
Here's a bit of information on the info set, with some pointers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML_Information_Set Not sure if this provides anything immediately useful for your problem, but I thought I'd mention it in case you hadn't yet seen it. My opinion with the questions that you raise is: - it's not a bug in Derby that the serialization can differ in details like this - carefully written XML applications should not be affected by this - it is reasonable to adjust the test to avoid hitting this problem. thanks, bryan
