WebLogic: The Definitive Guide

The XML Registry

An XML Registry provides domain-wide configuration settings for XML parsers and XSL transformers, as well as resolution of different external entities. It is a domain resource that can be administered on a per-server basis using the Administration Console. Once you associate an XML Registry with a server instance, the settings apply to all applications running on that server. A WebLogic domain may define multiple XML Registries, but one XML Registry only may be assigned to a server instance. Of course, the same XML Registry may be shared by multiple servers in the domain. If a server instance doesn’t have an XML Registry targeted to it, any server-side application that uses the JAXP interfaces will use the default parsers and XSL transformers shipped with your WebLogic distribution.

An XML Registry allows you to configure alternative parsers and transformers, instead of WebLogic’s built-in parsers and transformers.

Tip

The XML parsers and XSL transformers you’ve defined in the registry are available only to server-side applications that use the standard JAXP interface. The XML Registry doesn’t affect applications that directly use the API provided by the actual parser implementation.

As we saw in earlier examples, an application that relies on JAXP does not need to use any code specific to the parser or transformer. The XML Registry lets you plug in different parsers and transformers without changing any code. The parser implementation returned by JAXP depends on ...