I am new to dealing with XML and I have to store key/value pairs. Is there a preferred way of doing this? Here are a few possibilities I could come up with:

**Way 1**

```
<item key="k1" value="val1" />
<item key="k2" value="val2" />
<item key="k3" value="val3" />

```

**Way 2**

```
<item><key>k1</key><value>val1</value></item>
<item><key>k2</key><value>val2</value></item>
<item><key>k3</key><value>val3</value></item>

```

**Way 3**

```
<key name="k1">val1</key>
<key name="k2">val2</key>
<key name="k3">val3</key>

```

Thanks.

**update:**
In the meantime I have found this:
<http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-eleatt.html>