XOM API for Processing XML with Java

["O'Brien-Strain, Eamonn" <eob AT exch.hpl.hp.com>]

I have not yet run the Oasis conformance tests.  Probably they should be done 
before doing a "stable" Sparta release.  (The current release is designated 
"beta".)

I did run Sparta on all the Oasis XML test cases just to make sure I had no 
bad bugs (like NullPointerExceptions) in the code and to use for performance 
measurements.  This was particularly useful for making sure I could handle 
various non-Latin Unicode encodings.

Sparta does handle some well-formedness checks, like making sure that 
elements names have correct characters.  However, because Sparta does not 
validate DTDs and is designed to be as fast and small as possible, it ignores 
everything it can in the <!DOCTYPE ...> section and so there are bound to be 
some well-formedness checks that it fails -- but these should not effect the 
DOM tree.

So, the goal is that Sparta should handle all the well-formedness checks that 
effect the Sparta DOM tree, but it should not add code complexity or size to 
do other checks.

__ 
Eamonn O'Brien-Strain 
HP Labs 
eob AT hpl.hp.com 



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Elliotte Rusty Harold [mailto:elharo AT metalab.unc.edu]
[...]
> One thing I was not able to determine by browsing of the JavaDocs and 
> source code is how conformant the parser is. Given that Sparta does 
> not resolve external entities or validate, (which is allowed by the 
> XML spec) does it still make all remaining well-formedness checks? 
> Will it throw an exception if an illegal character is used in an 
> element name? Will it notice problems in the internal DTD subset? 
> Does it pass the Oasis XML conformance tests 
> <http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/xml-conformance/suite-v1se/xmlconf-20010315.htm>
>  
for a processor of its type?