In general, I liked XML. But the entire system seemed fragile. Parsing and validation were great. It was a great system for ensuring your data matched the schema. But if it didn’t, it seems like it never failed gracefully. As in, you’d be unable to even open your spreadsheet document if some random web server was down. Or if you were on a plane.

Just a few of the things I didn’t like about it. But when the system worked, it was quite capable.