the origin of the latter, the edi/xml WG, was the successor of an edi/sgml WG which had started in the early 1990, and was born out of the desire to get a "universal electronic data exchange" that would work cross platform, vms, mainframes, unix and even DOS hehe, and to leverage the successful sgml doc book interoperability.
was it niche? yes. was it starting in sgml already? and baked into xml/xsd/xslt? I think so.
data exchange was baked into xml from the get go, the following predate the 1.0 release and come from people involved in writing the standard:
XML, Java, and the future of the Web Jon Bosak, *Sun Microsystems* Last revised *1997.03.10*
section on Database interchange: the universal hub
https://www.ibiblio.org/bosak/xml/why/xmlapps.htm
Guidelines for using XML for Electronic Data Interchange Version 0.04
*23rd December 1997*
https://xml.coverpages.org/xml-ediGuide971223.html
the origin of the latter, the edi/xml WG, was the successor of an edi/sgml WG which had started in the early 1990, and was born out of the desire to get a "universal electronic data exchange" that would work cross platform, vms, mainframes, unix and even DOS hehe, and to leverage the successful sgml doc book interoperability.
was it niche? yes. was it starting in sgml already? and baked into xml/xsd/xslt? I think so.