Java and XML, 3rd Edition

Chapter 14. Looking Forward

It’s almost time to wrap up the journey through Java and XML. I hope you’ve had fun. Before I leave you to mull over all the possibilities, I want to finish up with a few pointers to interesting XML-related technologies that we weren’t able to discuss in this book.

XML Appliances

The various XML processing libraries discussed in this book have been implemented entirely in software, sometimes as part of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) and sometimes as separate libraries. In addition to these options, there are also solutions for processing XML using specialized hardware. In some cases, this hardware is packaged as an add-in card that is installed in a server. In other cases, the hardware is a separate box, which is accessed over a network. Regardless of how it’s packaged, your application uses a specialized library to offload processing onto the specialized XML hardware. With most hardware, these libraries include implementation of the JAXP interfaces discussed in Chapter 7, in which case your code may not need to be changed to take advantage of the hardware. XML appliances are made by companies such as DataPower and Sarvega, subsidiaries of IBM and Intel, respectively, as well as smaller companies like Layer 7 Technologies and Reactivity.

XML Databases

As you work with XML documents, you may find yourself needing to manage collections of documents. XML databases (sometimes called XML-native databases) are built for just this task. You can query a collection ...