Question about Dynamic Flash

I have been away from the flash seen for about 18 months as the company I work for mainly uses PHP. XHTML and Javascript for client sites.

I am keen to get back into freshening up my AS2 and flash skills and tying it into my knowledge of PHP/MYSQL for dynamic sites. I just wondered is it better/easier to bring in database content as XML files or straight from Database. Before I stopped I managed to convert the XML gallery tutorial on this site into a small news feed so have some XML knowledge.

Any advice would be appreciated.