title: Why is it invalid to have "(" or ")" characters in an XML Element Name?
body: <p>I'm currently having some problems with an application that generates XML in runtime and then tries to parse it elsewhere.</p>
  
  <p>In some cases I'm getting an with the message "error parsing attribute name", this here is an example of a XML that fails:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;datastore&gt;
     &lt;row id="Timer?ID=0"&gt;
        &lt;ID&gt;0&lt;/ID&gt;
        &lt;START_TIME_(sec)&gt;120&lt;/START_TIME_(sec)&gt;
     &lt;/row&gt;
  &lt;/datastore&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The parser seems to fail as soon as it tries read the <strong>(</strong> character, this happens with other characters like <strong>)</strong> and <strong>?</strong>.</p>
  
  <p>I thought that the only invalid characters in XML where the ones specified in this answer: <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/a/1091953">https://stackoverflow.com/a/1091953</a></p>
  
  <p>Any idea why this could be failing? </p>