I see the main problem of XML in it's model not matching the data model you usually work with. In code you work with arrays or structs/objects that have members

I see the main problem of XML in it's model not matching the data model you usually work with. In code you work with arrays or structs/objects that have members. Members can be other structs or arrays or primitive types. Arrays can be composed of structs, arrays or primitive types (sometimes heterogenous, but not very often). This does not map to DOM at all, in any direction. In XML DOM you have structured nodes intermixed with text, order of nodes is significant (or may not be) and you have attributes. On top you have namespaces. Indeed, you can restrict to subset of XML and find a mapping that works, guaranteed you will get a very verbose XML that is hard to work with.