Java-based XML Parsers

[David Megginson]

Peter Murray-Rust writes:

 > The other *Java* parsers on Robin's list are:
 > 
 > MSXML:
 > 	Version: 			?
 > 	Date in distribution		19971204 (RobinC)
 > 	XML1.0-compliant		No??
 > 	SAX1.0pre-beta compliant	No
 > 	SAX1.0beta compliant		Megginsonian SAX wrapper(?)
 > 	DTD-related information		?
 > 	Validating			No?
 > 	Pure Java			??
 > [PMR: I tried to install this some time ago and couldn't, but didn't give
 > it lots of time. Clearly lots of people *can* run it. If it's trivial to
 > run under (a) java (b) in an applet and there is a SAX wrapper, I might
 > find the time to try it out.]

I have managed to use 1.8 (I think) out of the box on my notebook, and
have taken the SAX driver as far as I can.  I don't know if it's "pure
Java", but it certainly didn't break under Linux.

There are several serious and well-known bugs in the current version
of MSXML that make it unreliable for production use (such as bogus
validation errors, the failure to report defaulted attribute values
and badly broken entity management); however, since future versions of
MSXML will probably ship with MSIE, MSXML has a very strong
distribution channel and deserves attention.  It might be be
worthwhile to plan to support it when Microsoft has a chance to go
back and finish development.

 > IBM:
 > 	Version: 			?
 > 	Date in distribution		19980416 (RobinC)
 > 	XML1.0-compliant		Yes?
 > 	SAX1.0pre-beta compliant	?
 > 	SAX1.0beta compliant		?
 > 	DTD-related information		?
 > 	Validating			Yes
 > 	Pure Java			?
 > 
 > [PMR: I have no experience of this and all the information above comes from
 > RobinC's page. If there are plans to make it SAX-compliant and it's easy to
 > install I'd be interested in having a look.]

IBM's XML for Java shipped with a SAX driver for the January draft
(thanks, guys), and they included SAX 1.0 compliance on the time line
during their presentation at the XML Developers' Day in Seattle.  You
should probably watch this one closely.

XML for Java does provide DTD information and even guided authoring
(though I haven't tested those features), and again, it runs under
Linux JDK 1.1.5.


All the best,


David

-- 
David Megginson                 ak117 at freenet.carleton.ca
Microstar Software Ltd.         dmeggins at microstar.com
      http://home.sprynet.com/sprynet/dmeggins/

xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev at ic.ac.uk
Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/
To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo at ic.ac.uk the following message;
(un)subscribe xml-dev
To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo at ic.ac.uk the following message;
subscribe xml-dev-digest
List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa at ic.ac.uk)