Eureka!
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<br />I am still struggling with my linux installation, but my winxp turnkey looks ok on the DataExtractionAndUpdateDB sample finally. One obstacle I had to overcome was already divulged in another post; it just didn't make it here: the first xml processing instruction (<?xml version="1.0" ..="" etc=""?>
followed by comments on what test-ds.xml does needed to be removed. Following this, the xml file was well formed and could be parsed by the app.
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<br />This doesn't fix this thread's specific issue, but I am confident that I can continue eval using winxp for the time being. Hope this helps someone.