So I think Michael's comment on data model misses the pulse of technology: that as well as times of planting (where top-down approaches like 'data-model first' are good) there are also times of pruning (where bottom-up 'lets have a strategy for tackling this monster' are appropriate.) XML was not a planting exercise, but a pruning exercise. (Ditto, actually, for JSON.)
It's very true, of course, that XML (like so many technologies) was successful because it was done quickly, and that taking longer to do it better would probably have ensured an early death. That doesn't stop us having an interesting discussion about what exactly the flaws are.
Michael Kay Saxonica
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