XML vs/or/and MySQL

Hi all,

I have a flash page which contains products, each product has the same heading, i.e. Price, Description, Availability… If I were doing this without Flash normally I’d build a PHP page and use a MySQL database… This still seems like the best option to me even in Flash, although a few people have told me I should set up a XML file which I can change and that would update the images and text, but isn’t that why I would have a MySQL database? Wouldn’t I change it on the server side and Flash would update it that way?

Not really understanding why we need XML and and how it benefits us when we could be using a MySQL db…

Thanks all in advance!