Re: [Vtd-xml-users] xerces discussion on VTD

[Tatu S. <cow...@ya...>]

--- Jimmy Zhang <cra...@co...> wrote:

> Thanks. It would take sometime to take VTD
> seriously...
> Given that DOM and SAX are so bad for so long,
> people
> have literally got used to them... and sometime had
> a tough
> time getting out of the "cave."

It is true, however, that VTD-XML as well as any other
tools has its optimal use cases, and limits.
I think it is useful to be clear about both benefits
(compact representation, efficient just-in-time
extraction if only parts of content are needed, fast
serialization likewise if modifications are small) and
limitations.

There are really 2 major limitations I think:

(a) It does not (and probably will not) handle DTDs:
validation is not the problem (it could be
implemented), but entities are, and perhaps things
like attribute defaulting and normalization. This may
be problematic for document-centric approaches, but
usually is not for data-centric (like SOAP messages
etc)
(b) Namespace handling is not very complete, nor
efficient; this because the way namespaces work is
somewhat conflicting with the way VTD-XML does its
processing, to obtain high speed. So I am not sure if
it should be used for documents with namespaces.

There are still many use cases where neither above is
a problem: but there are also cases where it is.
Clearly understanding limitations and benefits, and
choosing right tools based on this is essential.

-+ Tatu +-




 
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