Re: RFC: Simple XML Event-Based API for Java

Peter Murray-Rust (peter@ursus.demon.co.uk)
Thu, 18 Dec 1997 10:51:02


At 04:15 15/09/97 -0400, Tyler Baker wrote:
[...]
>
>I am not sure if this is at all relevant to this discussion, but I got
some info

Well *I* found it extremely valuable :-). This is exactly the sort of thing
that novices will find a variety of ways of tackling. If your suggestions
gets support from those who know more than me, it may be worth considering
for the API.

FWIW I think that the presentation of Trees in the API is the area where
guidance is most valuable. If affects a lot of the downstream part of the
application. Moreover, if people return Objects from a Tree, their nature
has to be very carefully agreed. An Element or a PI is much more obvious by
comparison.

[...]
>In the parser application, using Object to represent both data types is not
>good enough because it still takes up too much memory. So a further change
>has been implemented. After doing some research, it was found that the
>child array consisted of a single Node element about 95 percent of the

Is this figure just for one application, or is it likely to have a
Ziff-like distribution (i.e. "most" XML applications will have only a
single non-terminal child at "most" of the nodes).

>time. So it's possible to represent one-child cases directly using an
>Object reference to the child node, rather than a reference to a one-long
>array of child nodes.

P.

Peter Murray-Rust, Director Virtual School of Molecular Sciences, domestic
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