Java EE XML handling

Java EE provides various technology choices for handling XML documents. Three of these technologies are Java Architecture for XML Binding (JAXB), Streaming API for XML (StAX), and the Document Object Model (DOM) API. This Tech Tip compares these choices, and shows the technologies in use in a sample application.

JAXB

JAXB technology provides a way to bind XML schemas to Java objects so that developers can easily process data in their Java applications. The JAXB API provide methods to unmarshal an XML document into a Java object and marshal a Java object into an XML document. For more information about JAXB, see the Tech Tip What's New in JAXB 2.0.

A significant advantage of using JAXB is that you can compile the schema (or dtd) to generate a Java content tree, and then work with plain Java objects. JAXB is not particularly good in cases where complex schemas are involved and you want to work with only a small set of content.

StAX

StAX is a streaming API for processing XML documents. It's an event-driven, "pull" parser that reads and writes XML documents. For more information about StAX, see the Tech Tip Introducing the Sun Java Streaming XML Parser.

StAX's bidirectional features, small memory footprint, and low processor requirements give it an advantage over APIs such as JAXB or DOM. StAX is particularly effective in extracting a small set of information from a large document. The primary drawback in using StAX is that you get a narrow view of the document -- essentially you have to know what processing you will do before reading the XML document. Another drawback is that StAX is difficult to use if you return XML documents that follow complex schema.

DOM

DOM is platform-neutral and language-neutral API that enables programs to dynamically update the contents of XML documents. For more information about DOM, see the Tech Tip Using the Document Object Model.

DOM creates an in-memory object representation of an entire XML document. This allows extreme flexibility in parsing, navigating, and updating the contents of a document. DOM's drawbacks are high memory requirements and the need for more powerful processing capabilities.

http://java.sun.com/developer/EJTechTips/2006/tt0527.html#2

Tony