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Re: Parsing efficiency? - why not 'compile'????

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: Re: Parsing efficiency? - why not 'compile'????
• From: Robin Berjon <robin.berjon@e...>
• Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 11:57:37 +0100
• In-reply-to: <15962.49099.318137.237747@m...>
• Organization: Expway
• References: <OF047F14BF.0A3C2919-ONCA256CD8.00031C17@f...> <15962.49099.318137.237747@m...>
• Reply-to: robin.berjon@e...
• User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.2) Gecko/20021126

David Megginson wrote:
> Matthew.Bennett@f... writes:
>  > Why parse repeatedly, if it's so damned inefficient? Why not come
>  > up with the concept of a 'compiled' xml document; one where
>  > structural info. is stored, and access is *FAST*, and validity and
>  > well-formedness have already been 'certified'? No-one's surprised
>  > that interpretive languages are execution dogs compared to compiled
>  > versions (because of no on-going parsing!), so why the mock horror
>  > that interpretive XML is so inefficient?
> 
> This is not a new idea, but despite many bold attempts and breathless
> announcements, in five years no one has come up with anything that has
> caught on.

In fact, things have caught on under the hood here and there, without making 
much fuss. For instance Cocoon has cXML and Perl has XML::Filter::Cache both of 
which store a simple list of SAX events in order to simulate a parse, only 
faster. In the wild, you will find a variety of more or less ad hoc solutions to 
the same problem.

What is true however is that no interoperable solution has been devised yet.

-- 
Robin Berjon <robin.berjon@e...>
Research Engineer, Expway        http://expway.fr/
7FC0 6F5F D864 EFB8 08CE  8E74 58E6 D5DB 4889 2488

• References:
  • Parsing efficiency? - why not 'compile'????
    • From: Matthew.Bennett@f...
  • re: Parsing efficiency? - why not 'compile'????
    • From: David Megginson <david@m...>

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