[richx]

The European Securities and Exchange Commission (ESMA) has just now mandated all listed companies in the EU to publish their annual financial statements in XHTML instead of PDF or paper. Combined with XBRL taxonomies it’s a very powerful structured format. Please don’t forget that XML is widespread in business applications and I haven’t seen any similar powerful replacement for XML validation and XPath. Please let me know if you know one.

[barefootliam]

There isn't an alternative, largely i think because XML people come at the problem from the idea that documents are primary, not just artifacts of programs.

[zmix]

Very good comment. I wholeheartedly agree.

Also, there is a whole world outside of software development: The world, that uses this software. And that world produces documents, that need to be managed. And those, who manage them, are users, not programmers.

[namedgraph]

Data-driven architecture is the future. Data has to be driving the software, not the way around.