In the eiConsole Data Mapper a Node is an object. The nomenclature comes from the XML standard itself, where any object within an XML tree is called a “Node”. “Elements” are nodes which have attributes (also nodes) and child nodes. Generally they’re pretty interchangeable. Using a good analogy, you can think of it this way: “A node is like a fruit, an element is like an apple. An apple is a kind of fruit; an element is a kind of node.”