Incompatibilities with XML processing?

[Duane Morse <dm...@eldocomp.com>]

Our servlet software uses Sun's jaxp-1.1 early access jar files for XML
processing.  We had to make
a few software changes when going to this release, and I have a strong
suspicion that jaxp-1.1 is
incompatible with the XML classes used by Tomcat 3.1.  When I take a servlet
which doesn't use
the XML processing and add some code which requires XML classes to be
loaded, Tomcat claims
that it cannot find a required class definition
(org.xml.sax.helpers.DefaultHandler), even though the jar file
which contains this class is indeed in the CLASSPATH.  When I remove
Tomcat's xml.jar, the server
won't start because it doesn't find DocumentHandler.

We moved to the early access because the accompanying documentation
indicated that this is
the "wave of the future".  Is this the sort of thing that happens when you
try to ride the wave?  When
Tomcat upgrades their XML processing to the new wave, won't that break
existing code that
depended on the old wave?

Any suggestions on how to deal with this version incompatibility problem?



Duane Morse, Eldorado Computing Inc., Phoenix AZ

Re: Incompatibilities with XML processing?

["Craig R. McClanahan" <Cr...@eng.sun.com>]

Duane Morse wrote:

> Our servlet software uses Sun's jaxp-1.1 early access jar files for XML
> processing.  We had to make
> a few software changes when going to this release, and I have a strong
> suspicion that jaxp-1.1 is
> incompatible with the XML classes used by Tomcat 3.1.  When I take a servlet
> which doesn't use
> the XML processing and add some code which requires XML classes to be
> loaded, Tomcat claims
> that it cannot find a required class definition
> (org.xml.sax.helpers.DefaultHandler), even though the jar file
> which contains this class is indeed in the CLASSPATH.  When I remove
> Tomcat's xml.jar, the server
> won't start because it doesn't find DocumentHandler.
>

Your assumption is pretty much on target.  You really want to use Tomcat 3.2 or
4.0 (which rely on JAXP-compliant XML parsers for their own use) if you want to
do this.

>
> We moved to the early access because the accompanying documentation
> indicated that this is
> the "wave of the future".  Is this the sort of thing that happens when you
> try to ride the wave?  When
> Tomcat upgrades their XML processing to the new wave, won't that break
> existing code that
> depended on the old wave?
>
> Any suggestions on how to deal with this version incompatibility problem?
>

Upgrade to 3.2.  A final release is imminent.

>
> Duane Morse, Eldorado Computing Inc., Phoenix AZ

Craig McClanahan