My application has a lot of decision to make before finally saving my data to the database. I am using JQuery to do this. I have succeeded in creating a moderately long xml string, due to the fact that the user will enter data that will each need to be verified.
I have made this decision base of the number of trips i expect my application to make back to the server. Currently i'm storing this xml in a hidden field. I want to know if there are better approaches? Please.
Are you passing the hidden field along through multiple form submissions? If that's the case, you should probably look into storing session variables. This really is a lot more reliable (and better practice) than keeping it all client-side.
Make sure you're still verifying the data server-side. Don't trust javascript alone to do it.
You can use the 'data' function in jQuery:
http://docs.jquery.com/Core/data#namevalue
You can store name value pairs and retrieve them when you need them.