[pbreit]

The problem with XML is that it seemed to encourage more complicated data structures. People sort of forgot that you still have to process all this data. And that, at the end of the day, a lot of it ends up needing to be represented in columns and rows.

[Kroem3r]

No question that's a huge problem; that's the gist of this thread after all.

To my eye the problem with XML is that relational data feels like a hack and people specifying XML default to flattening their data.

My favorite example is a thing called ONIX (for representing bibliographic metadata) which is irredeemably broken, but in world-wide use, none the less.