Abstract: A binding framework including a binder operable to associate and synchronize particular document objects with corresponding content objects performs unmarshalling to create the content objects from the XML documents. The content objects, which may in particular configurations be JAXB content objects, provide an alternate view to the XML data contained in the underlying XML documents. Java (i.e. user) applications then modify, or update the content objects via the alternate view, and rewrite, or update, the corresponding XML document during a marshalling process (i.e. writing the data from Java back into XML). The binding framework maintains the associations such that bound content objects are modifiable and may update the corresponding XML data in a non-destructive manner which avoids overwriting or “clobbering” other preexisting data contained in the XML document object during marshalling.