XOM API for Processing XML with Java

[Michael Kay <mike AT saxonica.com>]

> 
> Would there be any difference between attribute content and element
> content?
> 

I think it's more likely that parser designers have thought carefully about 
how to handle long text nodes than about how to handle very long attributes.

For example, the SAX interface allows character data to be broken up into 
chunks as the parser sees fit, and to be passed as a reference into a char[] 
array, whereas attribute values have to be passed as a single String. It 
wouldn't surprise me if the case of attribute values crossing buffer 
boundaries is considered sufficiently rare that a simple string concatenation 
is used, which implies quadratic performance as the attribute length 
increases. That's pure conjecture, but it seems consistent with what you are 
seeing.

Michael Kay
Saxonica