Java and XML, Second Edition

JAXP 1.1

Late in 2000, the expert group for JAXP 1.1 formed, and work got underway to move JAXP 1.0 to a better, more effective solution for parsing and handling XML documents. As I write this chapter, JAXP 1.1 has just become downloadable in a final form from Sun’s web site at http://java.sun.com/xml. Many of the changes to the API center around parsing, which makes sense, given that the “P” in JAXP stands for “parsing.” But the most significant changes in JAXP 1.1 center around XML transformations, which I cover in the last part of this chapter. In terms of additions to 1.0 functionality, the changes are fairly minor. The biggest addition is support for SAX 2.0, which went final in May of 2000, and DOM Level 2, which was finalized in November of 2000. Remember that JAXP 1.0 supported only SAX 1.0 and DOM Level 1. This lack of updated standards has been one of the biggest criticisms of JAXP 1.0, and is probably why the 1.1 version has appeared so quickly.

In addition to updating JAXP to the newest versions of SAX and DOM, several small changes have been made in the API feature list. Almost all of these changes are the result of feedback from the various companies and individuals on the JAXP expert group. These changes also all deal with configuring the parsers returned from JAXP’s two factories, SAXParserFactory and DocumentBuilderFactory. I cover these now, as well as the update in standards support for SAX and DOM, and then we look at the new TrAX API that is part of JAXP ...