SOAP and OOXML aren’t exactly the greatest of examples of XML if your point is to defend it. OOXML is so verbose (it’s actually dozens of XML files which are c

SOAP and OOXML aren’t exactly the greatest of examples of XML if your point is to defend it. OOXML is so verbose (it’s actually dozens of XML files which are completely incoherent to a human reader) that it needed to be compressed into an archive. Microsoft use the ZIP format for that, so clearly they weren’t going for the best tech possible since otherwise they’d have elected to use one of the many newer and vastly superior compression formats. I’m fact the reason Microsoft moved their Offixe Suite to XML+ZIP is purely because they were ordered to adopt an open standard and they didn’t have any control over ODT et al so created their own competing “open standard” to OpenOffices (this was before LibraOffice was forked). As for SOAP, most devs I know, myself included, hate using SOAP. And it’s certainly not the most efficient way of sending typed payloads - not even remotely. But it is one of the most widespread ways of doing it. However if the history of technology has taught us anything: being in widespread use doesn’t mean it isn’t also complete garbage. I actually do like the founding principle behind XML; but as a specification it’s horrible to implement. As a human it’s horrible to read. And as an engineer, it’s horribly bloated. We have better formats for encoding structured data.