Xerces vs XML4J

[Mike Brown <mi...@skew.org>]

This is surely a FAQ, but I didn't see it at either the XML4J site or
on xml.apache.org. What exactly is the *current* relationship between
XML4J and Xerces? I have to answer this question for people at my 
company who are wary of the open-source, bleeding-edge, "current"
version when Big Blue has a version that seems to be equivalent to a 
"stable" development branch. In particular, they are concerned about
XSchema support.

-Mike

Re: Xerces vs XML4J

[Andy Clark <an...@apache.org>]

Mike Brown wrote:
> This is surely a FAQ, but I didn't see it at either the XML4J site or
> on xml.apache.org. What exactly is the *current* relationship between
> XML4J and Xerces? I have to answer this question for people at my
> company who are wary of the open-source, bleeding-edge, "current"
> version when Big Blue has a version that seems to be equivalent to a
> "stable" development branch. In particular, they are concerned about
> XSchema support.

Currently, XML4J EA3 is built on top of Xerces, as will future IBM
releases of the parser. We will continue to have com.ibm.xml.*
wrapper classes so that your code will remain the same (assuming
that you program straight to standard APIs like DOM and SAX).

Whether you get the XML parser from alphaWorks or from Apache,
there is no support other than letting us know about bugs. You
can continue to get support for XML4J, however, through the
WebSphere package.

As for XML Schema support, XML4J EA3 and Xerces have limited
support for Schema from the 24 Sep 1999 working draft. We will
continue to work to provide full support for XML Schema as the
specification moves towards a W3C Recommendation. Until XML
Schema is a standard and we ship a parser that is fully 
compliant with that specification, all XML Schema support
should be considered experimental.

-- 
Andy Clark * IBM, JTC - Silicon Valley * andyc@apache.org