Xerces Program Logic Docs

[Frank Griffin <ft...@ntplx.net>]

I'm interested in using the Xerces parser as "the" XML parser to be
integrated with my company's mainframe database reporting products.
However, I have not read every printed line of the W3C drafts/specs, nor
do I expect to have time to.  I'm a fair hand at Java, and would like to
be able to do more than just post suspected bugs here, e.g. actually be
able to debug problems and suggest solutions, but I'm hampered by having
very little knowledge of the structure of the Xerces code.  I suspect
that it very closely mirrors the W3C specs, but as I said above, I don't
really want or need to master the entire spec to be able to go into the
code base and narrow down problems.

Do you guys have any sort of internal docs about the structure of
Xerces, and possibly a "cheat sheet" that those of us not conversant
with the full W3C specs could use to get up to speed on the division of
labor between the various classes and packages ?  I don't need to be
able to write Xerces code unassisted, but I would like to be able to
post more constructive comments than "this doesn't seem to work".

Part of my motivation here is that, for anyone interested in presenting
an arbitrary XML document to an application as a "database", the ability
to access Schema information (your GrammarAccess) is critical in order
to be able to dynamically produce the database "metadata" for the
application.  I understand that this feature is outside the blessed
spec, and therefore less likely to receive critical resources, but if I
can get enough basic design info to contribute something meaningful
(patches or augmentation) without having to first get my PhD in W3C
specs, I'd like to try.