xml-dev - Re: DOM Interoperability was RE: Why the Infoset?

[Michael Champion <Mike.Champion@softwareag-usa.com>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dylan Walsh" <Dylan.Walsh@Kadius.com>
To: "XMLDev list" <xml-dev@lists.xml.org>
Sent: Wednesday, July 26, 2000 11:43 AM
Subject: DOM Interoperability was RE: Why the Infoset?



> I recently came across a problem where one vendors Java DOM implementation
> wouldn't play with another venders Java DOM implementation. Does this mean
> that either or both of them is not following the spec, or is the DOM Java
> binding spec. not intended to provide this type of capability?

A DOM *application* should run identically on multiple implementations of
the DOM if a) the spec is indeed unambiguous enough and b) the vendors have
correctly implemented the spec.  (Of course, since the DOM does not specify
all the startup/loading/saving APIs in a standard way, I'm talking about the
results of the standard API calls being identical).

I'm not sure what "wouldn't play with another venders Java DOM
implementation" means exactly.  It is *not* the intention of the DOM to
ensure that that one implementation's specific Java class that implements a
DOM interface can be used directly by another implementation.  For example,
a single class could implement multiple DOM interfaces in one vendor's code
and a single class could implement only one interface in another.  There's
no way that these could "play nicely together" at the class level, only at
the DOM interface level.

Or back to the subject at hand ... a *Java* serialization of the *classes*
in one implementation might be gibberish to another implementation, but the
*XML* serialization of the InfoSet represented by those classes should be
identical.

Forgive me if this is overwhelmingly obvious and I've missed the point of
the question ...