XOM API for Processing XML with Java

["Michael Kay" <mike AT saxonica.com>]

> you are unwilling to pay the onerous 
> entry ticket to the enterprise software world; I assume 
> Elliotte's position is much the same.

No, that's not how I would put it. So called enterprise software tends to
hold customers back; they're stuck on JDK 1.4 or earlier because they are
using some application server or database with a 6-figure price tag that
contains a zillion lines of code and only produces a new release every four
years because it's impossible to test the bugs out, and which doesn't work
with JDK 1.5 because for all those megabucks, the vendor can't actually move
very fast. The reason I don't want to play that game is because I don't
think that's the kind of software that enterprise users actually want: they
want something that's cheaper, smaller, leaner, and more fast-moving. When
they can get that, they are prepared to move forward when necessary to fix
bugs.

I've got plenty of users, both paying and non-paying, doing serious
enterprise things with Saxon, and I'm sure the same is true of XOM. Often
they are using much older releases than is healthy. For a paying customer I
would certainly consider fixing an old version where necessary. But until
now it has always been the case that if when a user hits a problem with an
old release, the best solution has been to move forward, and I would much
rather put effort into making it easy to move forward than to start
maintaining old releases, because I think that's in the best interests of
all my users. If they have to forgo some fancy (and largely cosmetic) new
feature in JDK 1.5, that's a price worth paying.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/