I think you’ll find that as you understand data trees more deeply, they actually relate quite nicely to architectural hierarchies, and have almost the same power as multi-dimensional arrays (in many cases, more power!). I think of the branch paths as records of the model’s hierarchy. Here’s an example:
The power in data trees is the way in which complex structures can be matched to one another — without having to write complex nested loops. See this thread for a more in-depth discussion: Data doubts - #3 by andheum