[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: DOM or SAX: Sense and Sensibility
From: Bullard, Claude L (Len) [mailto:clbullar@i...] Sent: Wednesday, November 7, 2001 12:23 PM > A topic for the usual Friday introspection two > days early: > > How often do you as experienced XML developers > find people in your shop using DOM for work > more appropriate to SAX? Have you asked > them why and what do they say? What are the > costs of picking the wrong API? > > len Without any hard data, here are some reasons I suspect come into play when people choose the DOM over SAX, when SAX might be more appropriate: 1) A lot of programmers are not really used to event-based programming, as used by SAX. They're more comfortable working with an in-memory object model than in keeping track of context as events are passed in, etc. 2) Unfortunately, programmers [including myself] often test their code with much smaller data sets than they can expect in real life. One of the reasons one might choose SAX over the DOM is that one is working with very large XML documents, but if one is not testing one's code with large documents, one might not realize one needs SAX until it's too late... 3) For COM programmers, who use Microsoft technologies extensively: MSXML had [some] DOM support long before it had SAX support. I think a lot of programmers, who aren't XML gurus, just got used to the fact that "this is the way you work with XML". I've even heard people referring to an XML document as "a DOM", which shows how deep the confusion can go. David Hunter Senior Architect MobileQ david.hunter@m... http://www.mobileq.com
|
PURCHASE STYLUS STUDIO ONLINE TODAY!Purchasing Stylus Studio from our online shop is Easy, Secure and Value Priced! Download The World's Best XML IDE!Accelerate XML development with our award-winning XML IDE - Download a free trial today! Subscribe in XML format
|