I find using liquid xml studio makes it a little bit easier when working with xml files, mainly because its got everything i need including extensive schemas, wsl, xml, schema, editing parsing etc etc.
take a look at liquid xml c++ tool, it will actually output c++ code from your xml, still its better to do it yourself because thats the only way but it should certainly help you understand how to structure your code.
I have used Xerces and LiquidXMLC++ tool, xerves is a fairly lightweight xml parser and Liquid is a great tool for generating c++, c# and even java code straight from your xml or schema.
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