First, many putting down XML have apparently never dealt with ANSI interface standards. If you think ANSI record layouts can not be helped by XML organizing the data then you are sadly mistaken. But again, this is a cross platform transportation model.

I also find it somewhat amusing that people still believe relational databases are inheriently better than hierarchal. There's no one solution fits all. Have the OO arguements taught these people nothing?

Self describing data is a joke. Even in relational database (column name) it's a joke. The end result is whoever is using the data needs to understand the data. Let's not make this more complex than it needs to be.

XML does offer a "universal" way to pass (complex) related data. Delimited files do not offer this.

This article begs of typical bad research. He took a point of view, then found examples to support that point of view.

Lastly, the idea of a record being 4 times bigger, well it's all relative. If a record is 4 times bigger, but the small record is only 100 characters and the big record would then be 400 characters it doesn't matter on networks. They will both fit in a single ethernet packet and no additional network traffic will be had (I'm talking in a web oriented use here).