Hey,
Great writeup, after doing a quick read, I agree with most stuff, but have some minor remarks:
{{{data.color(ACME_SURVEY_2010)}}}
This suggests that we do not want property names with brackets in them. Sometimes an item might have 2 distinct properties with the same name (I can't think of any example right now but things this does occur) in which case you need to add some extra stuff in their name to distinguish them. WP often uses brackets for this when it happens with page names, so it does not seem to far fetched that people would want to use that here as well.
{{#data-link:|action=edit|the data item}}
I really don't like providing an empty value to have it use the default. Should be possible to just omit the parameter altogether. Also, I think it's nice to have the arguments be order independent. So using parameter names for everything except the identifier might be good. Right now it's for example impossible to have action=edit or similar at it's start.
Cheers
-- Jeroen De Dauw http://www.bn2vs.com Don't panic. Don't be evil. --