XOM API for Processing XML with Java

[Elliotte Harold <elharo AT metalab.unc.edu>]

> The additional memory (4 bytes) required per Node doesn't hurt much 
> either, considering how much memory is consumed by all sorts of other 
> info in node, element, text, etc. Perhaps Elliotte can profile memory by 
> parsing documents with java -verbose:gc and look at the final max memory 
> consumption.

I find it very hard to stomach four extra bytes per node. In my 
experience memory consumption is a huge problem for XML object models, 
and prevents people from using XML far more often than speed does. I've 
done extensive profiling on memory usage, and worked very hard to reduce 
each class down to the bare minimum. I'm still not quite there. They're 
a couple of indirections I can pull out, especially in ParentNode and 
Element, but mostly XOM is pretty small.

To convince me to spend four more bytes per node, the speed increase is 
going to have to be phenomenal, like a factor of ten on common 
operations. I'm not going to be convinced by 30% on one method. And even 
then, I might push this off into a separate Ant target.

--
Elliotte Rusty Harold  elharo AT metalab.unc.edu
XML in a Nutshell 3rd Edition Just Published!
http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/xian3/
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0596007647/cafeaulaitA/ref=nosim