GET /customers/43456 HTTP/1.1
Host: www.example.org
Response:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: text/xml; charset=utf-8
<customer>Foobar Quux, inc</customer>
Seems fine to me. In fact, having named elements without the requirement for a dictionary makes parsing straight to an object-representation (without an intermediate property-list) much easier.
It never equates XML with SOAP. The point is that even while SOAP was being pushed by Microsoft, JSON was gaining mindshare among API developers, and API design was moving away from complex XML documents.
Using a simpler format for object serialization into XML is definitely an option, and it's a perfectly fine middle-ground between SOAPy verbosity and JSON compactness, but IMO it doesn't really have a lot to offer over a JSON version of the same API. Many API providers support both formats using content-type detection.
Request:
Response: Seems fine to me. In fact, having named elements without the requirement for a dictionary makes parsing straight to an object-representation (without an intermediate property-list) much easier.