Java and XSLT

Performance Techniques

One common criticism of XSLT is its performance. The overhead of transformation from XML to another format is the price paid for clean separation between data and programming logic, as well as the ability to customize transformations for different clients. In this section, we look at strategies for improving performance without giving up the benefits that XSLT offers.

The actual XSLT transformation is not always the root of performance problems. XML parsers have a significant impact on performance, along with many other factors such as database access time, time spent processing business logic, and network latency.

Obsessing over performance can be a dangerous trap to fall into. Focusing too heavily on optimization techniques often results in code that is difficult or impossible to understand and maintain. From a strictly technical viewpoint, the fastest technology sounds great. From a business viewpoint, time to market and maintainability are often far more important than runtime performance metrics. An application that meets performance requirements and is easy to maintain over the years makes better business sense than a highly tuned, cryptic application that runs fast but cannot be modified because the original author quit the company and nobody can figure out the code.

Stress Testing with JMeter

One good way to measure overall application throughput is to simulate how real users use an application. Apache’s JMeter is designed to perform this task for ...