Fw: DOM vs. SAX??? Nah. (was RE: Storing Lots of Fiddly Bits (was Re: What is XML for?)

[Oren Ben-Kiki]

David Megginson <david at megginson.com> wrote:
>Wow!  I hadn't been following this thread, and had no idea that there
>was a DOM vs. SAX flame war going on.  Very cool.
>
>While I believe that some flame wars are justified -- Emacs really is
>better than vi,

Watch it! :-)

>Java really is better than C++, Linux really is better
>than Windows, and my Border Collie really is better than anyone's Jack
>Russell Terrier, all on objective and clearly verifiable grounds -- in
>this case I agree with both of Joe's points:
>
>1. SAX and DOM are complementary


IMVHO SAX should be defined not as a "parser interface" but as a "DOM tree
visitor interface". It should still be available as a separate API, but the
DOM specs should provide a standard way to apply a SAX visitor to a DOM
(sub)tree. A parser would be just a special case of an application which has
an internal "virtual DOM tree" and doesn't provide random access to it.

Once viewed this way, much of the motivation for the SAX vs. DOM wars would
disappear.

Have fun,

    Oren Ben-Kiki


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/ and on CD-ROM/ISBN 981-02-3594-1
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)