Scaling XML parsing on Intel architecture

XML Parsing Scalability: The XML parser can read in the contents of an XML document, convert XML schema information and can analyze the contents of the document. The process of reading and processing is referred to as parsing. XML parsing scalability can be improved on Intel architecture. Read this free XML tutorial to learn more about XML schema conversion and improving the scalability of your XML parsing.

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By Andy Longshaw, Content Master Ltd. Intel Corp.

XML provides many benefits due to its simplicity and ubiquity, and it's being applied in a spectrum of applications. Unfortunately, XML also carries with it a cost in overhead because it must be parsed and processed in order to extract and use the information it contains. This overhead can lead to a decrease in system scalability—processing XML messages takes time that could be spent performing useful business-oriented processing. By considering the way in which an application uses XML and the type of XML documents being exchanged, you can change the way in which a system is built to improve its XML processing scalability. The improvements can impact hardware, software, and infrastructure, and can be designed from the start or applied as part of a refactoring exercise.

Scope
The subject of scalability is broad and spans aspects of hardware, software, and infrastructure. This paper discusses some techniques that you can apply at all these levels to assist in scaling XML-based solutions.

Definitions
The following terms are used throughout this paper:

DOM—Document Object Model, a standard in-memory model of an XML document.

.NET Framework—Microsoft's latest development platform

SAX—Simple API for XML, a stream-oriented means of processing XML.

W3C—World Wide Web Consortium, a de facto standards body that oversees the evolution of many Internet standards, including those for the XML family of standards.

XML—eXtensible Markup Language, a standard for structuring and describing character-based data.

What is XML Parsing?
Any XML-enabled application must consume XML documents that are passed to it. The process of reading and processing is referred to as parsing. Among the mechanisms available to you for parsing XML are SAX and DOM, two XML processing models. All models do roughly the same things (although possibly in a different sequence):

1. Read in the contents of an XML document. The document can be from located in a file, or received through a socket or a Web-oriented connection.
2. Analyze the contents of the document, discerning elements, attributes, and text.
3. Provide access to the document contents for the developer.

Ways to manipulate XML data beyond simple parsing include applying an XSLT stylesheet to the incoming XML document in order to transform it in some way. However you plan to manipulate the XML, it must first be parsed to make the contents available to the application.