New standards always cause some friction, I have spent my fair share of time debugging XML issues where I was not certain of the value add of XML in that instance, esp. when the system's in question functioned fine in the past without XML. However, I think this misses the point. Peter Weill said at Web 2.0:
XML is like cardboard. It is a very useful packing material because it is malleable and self-describing. Cardboard is itself a large worldwide industry because it is so useful. Often the cardboard used in packaging is heavier than the actual contents of the package. So we should not really be complaining about the “angle brackets” because that’s really not the point.
Structured data is better than unstructured data. I continue to be mystified by the "web services are bad for security" position when I have yet to see application firewalls that deal with unstructured data anywhere near as effectively as XML security gateways and firewalls.
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