Holes in Microsoft Office XML

Holes in Microsoft Office XML: "When I first saw the demos for Microsoft Office 2003, I was blown away. Word would let me edit XML documents, Excel would give me easy access to both reading and creating tabular XML data, Access would let me get data in and out, and XDocs (now InfoPath) would make it easier for people to create XML documents using forms. Everything looked great.
Since then, I've become sadder but wiser. The glossy demos hid an underlying reality which was far less delightful. The marketing story breaks down under any close inspection. While there are useful pieces here, no question, Office 2003's XML support has to be viewed as a Microsoft 1.0 release, awaiting maturation to a Microsoft 3.0 release, when the parts finally come together."

Via John D. Head

I think the commentary is a bit harsh -- it's not as if Microsoft had the luxury of starting over with Office apps -- but useful to review