XML4J EA2 --> Xerces-J 1.0

[Mike Pogue]

David Brownell <david-b at pacbell.net> wrote:

> Re the Java version, the version in that article is still the latest
> commercially licensed version (2.0.15).  The review is not "out of
> date" even though IBM subsequently released a noncommercial "EA2".

> With the care IBM invested in ensuring that the "EA2" version not
> be licensed for products, it'd be inappropriate to review EA2 unless
> the 2.0.15 release gets withdrawn in its favor.

David,

	Something that you might not have been aware of:

	The Xerces-J parser (the Apache name for what IBM calls XML4J EA2) is
both compliant (including passing one test that we disagree with your
interpretation of the spec on), and is freely available.  Both source
code and binaries for Xerces-J version 1 are available at
http://xml.apache.org, with updates done frequently.

	IBM's XML4J EA2 parser was contributed to xml.apache.org a couple 
weeks ago, and it is available under the Apache Open Source license,
which permits redistribution of both source code and binaries (note that
redistribution of source is not allowed under the ProjectX parser
license.  The Apache license also does not require that developers
"deliver Modifications to Sun upon request", as is required by Sun.)

	I think you'll also find that Xerces-J is faster on initial DOM
creation (for example, parsing "ot.xml"), it is faster and consumes less
memory on subsequent DOM tree traversal, and it has a lot more features
(like DOM Level 2, SAX version 2, and initial XML Schema support),
compared to the ProjectX parser.  

	If you happen to also look at performance, be sure to measure the
"deferred" DOM for best performance (it uses slightly more memory to
gain in performance, but it's still less than ProjectX uses).

	Since the Xerces-J code (formerly XML4J) is now freely available for
commercial use, I think it's worth a look.  Let us know if you have any
problems running it (the developers at xml.apache.org will be happy to
fix them)!

Mike Pogue
(XML4J team at IBM, Xerces-J team at xml.apache.org)

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