Re: XML interface: SAX? DOM? something else? ... and what about writing?

From: mda_at_[hidden]
Date: 2001-10-02 12:41:25

FYI in my personal link farm, there are 4 xml parsers written
in C/C++:
expat expat.sourceforge.net
   bsd. SAX-ish. no DOM. non-validating.
RXP http://www.cogsci.ed.ac.uk/~richard/rxp.html
   GPL. no DOM. validating or not.
libxml http://www.xmlsoft.org
   dual W3C/LGPL. SAX-ish (modeled after expat), also has DOM.
   validating or not.
xerces http://xml.apache.org
   apache license. DOM and SAX. validating.

there are oodles in java, of course, and number of 
other half-way efforts in C/C++.

btw, i wouldn't want to use any xml parser that doesn't have
an automated test set, and that doesn't attempt to be conformant.
writing a buggy, nonconformant xml parser is indeed
something any of us can do in an afternoon. 
RXP for example does take testing fairly seriously:
    http://www.cogsci.ed.ac.uk/~richard/rxp-conformance.html
though it is GPL.

all of the above parsers are in C or bastardized C++, which
may (in addition to license issues) limit their reusability.

speaking of conformance testing, there is:
xmlconf.sourceforge.net
  David Brownell started. good initial effort, now seems inactive.
  unclear relationship to w3c and oasis efforts.
http://www.w3.org/DOM/Test/
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/xml-conformance/
  i can't tell how these are related to each other, though
  they claim that w3c and NIST are working together.

-mda