I am curious. How different is the states-concept different from the
xml-output functionality of mysqldump for example?

Example XML-output:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<mysqldump xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
<database name="dbname">
<table_structure name="images">
<field Field="idx" Type="bigint(20)" Null="NO"
Key="MUL" Extra="auto_increment" />
<field Field="added" Type="timestamp" Null="NO" Key=""
Default="CURRENT_TIMESTAMP" Extra="" />
<field Field="email" Type="varchar(150)" Null="NO"
Key="" Default="" Extra="" />
<field Field="filename" Type="varchar(75)" Null="NO"
Key="" Default="" Extra="" />
<field Field="tn_filename" Type="varchar(75)"
Null="NO" Key="" Default="" Extra="" />

etc