Don't get me wrong: There are lots and lots of things that are appealing about XML; I've used it numerous times to develop production apps, including tools that have to munge XML documents hundreds of thousands of lines long. And I love XML::Simple, because it makes using XML almost as easy as using native Perl data structures via something like Data::Dumper.

At the same time, though, I think it can be worth pointing out that, like any technology, XML is not necessarily the ideal solution for every problem. XML doesn't permit random access to records (though neither does CSV), it tends to be verbose, and you have to be careful with your document structure. XML::Simple hides most of that tedium, but then the various CSV modules on CPAN also take care of a lot of that for CSV as well.

        $perlmonks{seattlejohn} = 'John Clyman';