I am trying to use Xalan for the data that is stored not in an XML file, but in the database. There is too much of data to be loaded as a transient DOM tree into physical memory. We are trying to find a way of using Xalan when only a few nodes are loaded into the memory, but others could be fetched on demand.
It seems to me that Xalan's DOM model is built on the assumption that the whole DOM tree is loaded into the memory, therefore interface can return a pointer to a child node or reference to a string. However if the DOM tree is so large that it can't be held in memory a different interface is required. The one that uses proxy objects instead of pointers. A proxy object would serve as a smart pointer and load object's details from the database on demand. Is anyone out there trying to work with very large DOM trees? Does anyone knows whether Xalan will address the issue of large DOM trees in the near or remote future? Or maybe someone knows that Xalan should solve other improtant issues first and dealing with large DOM trees will not be addressed any time soon? ;-) Thanks a lot, Vitaly
