WebLogic: The Definitive Guide

Built-in Processors

The WebLogic distribution comes equipped with a number of standard XML parsers and transformers: the Apache-based Xerces and Xalan libraries, which provide the SAX and DOM parsers as well as the XSLT transformer. You also can use WebLogic’s own FastParser, which is a fast, nonvalidating SAX parser.

WebLogic’s FastParser

WebLogic’s FastParser is a high-performance, nonvalidating SAX parser. It has been designed for processing small to medium-size documents — documents that contain no more than 10,000 elements. This is typical of many web service applications, in which SOAP and WSDL documents tend to be small. The Streaming API, which we’ll cover later, is based on WebLogic’s FastParser.

Because the FastParser supports the SAX interface, you can use it instead of WebLogic’s default SAX parser, Apache Xerces. By configuring an XML Registry to use the FastParser factory, you ensure that your JAXP code automatically uses the FastParser for processing an XML document.

Clearly, you cannot use the nonvalidating FastParser to validate XML documents.

Using JAXP-Compliant Parsers

The default parsers supplied with WebLogic are based on Apache’s Xerces 2.1.0 and Xalan 2.2 libraries. They provide full support for SAX and DOM parsing, as well as XSL transformers. However, you are not required to use these parsers. For instance, you could upgrade the Xerces parser to a newer version that supports the current W3C XML Schema recommendation.

All parser implementations work on ...