Did you try using DBD::CSV or Text::xSV to pull data from the Access CSV dump? (Which I assume was dumped using Microsoft's standard save as CSV.) Anyways nobody keeps data in that format for working, if it is tabular data then it is destined for life in a relational database where it is far more easily manipulated than it is in CSV. (Unless it is going to a financial analyst in which case it is destined for life in an Excel spreadsheet.)

As for W3C, why waste my time? I don't think that CSV is an appropriate solution for their problems. It is a good one for interchanging a lot of the data that exists within the bond world, which is why there are standard formats there which have been used for years specifying CSV formatted data. They are here. They work. People use them.

And when it comes to management and hype, sometimes that is life. Personally I prefer it when developers are free to choose the most cost-effective tools for what they are doing. (For one thing PHB heavy companies don't do so well. And companies that always seek to follow the herd tend to find a lot of nasty cliffs. Big companies have enough intertia to survive most such cliffs, small ones do not. Either way, they aren't fun for the developers who go over them.) If that means XML, that means XML. If it means CSV, then that means CSV.

When it comes to tabular data I prefer CSV for several reasons. The first is that it is easier to see that it is tabular data at a glance. The second is that I prefer getting a 2 MB file to a 10 MB file. The third is that it takes a lot less work to set up a CSV format than it does to set up a DTD, etc. The fourth is that most people who work with tabular data already have more tools for CSV than XML. (Try any spreadsheet application.)

For non-tabular data, well CSV is not appropriate for that. Use the right tool for the job. As for when XML makes sense for that, I don't have much of an opinion. I haven't had to solve that problem extensively. Certainly it was originally designed for that problem space, and the sheer effort that has gone into XML undoubtably has resulted in some effective tools for some problems. The hype has also definitely resulted in it being used for problems where it doesn't make sense. I just don't know where the boundaries are.