ECMAScript for XML (E4X): A Simpler Programming Model
http://www.idealliance.org/proceedings/xml04/abstracts/paper327.html

Schneider, John
IDEAlliance
2004

Abstract:

Developing software to create, navigate and manipulate XML data has become a significant part of almost every developer's job. Developers are inundated with a wide variety of data encoded in XML, including web pages, web services, deployment descriptors, configuration files, project make files and a variety of XML vocabularies for vertical industries (from purchase orders to target lists).