I guess it depends on your definition of "large," but I would say that large is where XML is at its very worst. When data can't fit in main memory, then the XML overhead provides no benefit and incurs a great cost.
I would argue that data in general does not fit well to XML. Documents do fit well as it's absolutely fantastic at markup, i.e. where there isn't repeated structure. As soon as you have repeated structure (i.e. data as opposed to datum) then XML becomes a terrible format. CSV, tab-delimited, gzipped and separated by pipe characters, RDF triples, N3, give me almost •anything* other than XML and I'll be much happier.
In fact, XML is the reason that RDF is dead in the water. RDF could have been a useful concept, but it's so encumbered by a terrible formats and tools that it will almost never be useful; it can not escape the existing body of XML-RDF. And such a waste in the name cargo-cult mimicking of HTML.
I would argue that data in general does not fit well to XML. Documents do fit well as it's absolutely fantastic at markup, i.e. where there isn't repeated structure. As soon as you have repeated structure (i.e. data as opposed to datum) then XML becomes a terrible format. CSV, tab-delimited, gzipped and separated by pipe characters, RDF triples, N3, give me almost •anything* other than XML and I'll be much happier.
In fact, XML is the reason that RDF is dead in the water. RDF could have been a useful concept, but it's so encumbered by a terrible formats and tools that it will almost never be useful; it can not escape the existing body of XML-RDF. And such a waste in the name cargo-cult mimicking of HTML.