In response to Arjun Ray saying: "Data should be stored in formats appropriate to purpose. Systems are built to satisfy business requirements, not to propitiate theories."

Michael Kay wrote: "I think that kind of statement grossly undervalues the contribution that good systems architecture can make to business success."

Seen in the light of to what it responds, this is an amazing statement. Perhaps I misread it, but it suggests to me this thought: XML representation excels in the clarity and explicitness of structure; system architecture establishes important large-scale structures; XML representation can help to establish very clearly the relationships between document content and system structure - between document and large context, that is - and to align content items with items of system architecture.