Re: [Vtd-xml-users] 1.6 bug:

[Mark S. <ma...@Sc...>]

Jimmy Zhang wrote:
> A concern, if VTD-XML is to allow those chars, is that XML developers 
> are likely to
> shun away from VTD-XML for the fear that it is not enough conformant to 
> the spec...
> It is something that is worth thinking about...

Well, allow me try to make a stronger case:

In the real world, data isn't perfect. One can either toss back illegal 
data or try your best to work with it. A common best practice is to be 
as friendly and as considerate as you can to the incoming data, and 
produce the most accurate and conforming (to whatever standard) outgoing 
data.

Currently, VTD fails here wrt the incoming data; there is no way I can 
tell VTD to be considerate and lenient towards the failings of the 
incoming data stream. As a developer, I believe it is my choice - not 
VTD's - whether or not I wish to be considerate and lenient to the 
incoming data. If I wish to consider a form feed character as harmless, 
then I don't want my tools to get in the way. VTD is getting in the way.

 From a performance standpoint, VTD is now causing many negative 
consequences:

1. I must build and maintain a new additional layer to handle incoming 
requests - because I don't have the source to modify any of the previous 
layers. This new layer is required to scrub clean the incoming data - a 
job that VTD could have done far faster and cheaper both in terms of 
time and resources.

2. I need to allocate more objects to buffer the incoming data and the 
new cleaned result, and spend CPU time walking and cleaning the incoming 
data. VTD is already doing this exact same job, it's just missing a 
small insignificant extra if() statement.

3. The extra cost of memory and CPU (plus garbage collection) forced 
upon users of VTD (users who want to be considerate and friendly to 
clients sending in data) may now remove the advantages of VTD compared 
to other solutions.

4. (at least some of) VTDs competitors already scrub the data by 
default. The XPP (Xml Pull Parser) already does this. In fact, I was in 
the middle of switching away from XPP when I ran into this VTD 
limitation. For my particular use case, using VTD is now slower than XPP 
because of this scrubbing issue.

A single if{} could allow the pedantic behaviour (as it is currently) or 
a more friendly and considerate (I would argue more industry standard) 
behaviour.

In the real world, dirty data happens. We have to deal with it. VTDs 
value would be even greater if developers could count on it to help us 
with this problem.

Please consider it.

Thank you.


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