Re: [xml-dev] Abandon the (mistaken) belief that XML attributesprovide "

[Andrew Welch <andrew.j.welch@gmail.com>]

> When streaming, elements are processed one at a time (possibly even
> piece by piece, depending on the XML parser you are using), whereas
> all the attributes of an element and their values are reported at once,
> which costs memory, particularly if some attribute values are very long.

It's worth adding here, that if you are sax parsing and have to switch
processing based on some value, then its far easier to do that if its
an attribute than a child element.  For example:

<product type="A" name="blah">
  <stuff/>

vs

<product>
  <name>blah</name>
  <type>A</type>
  <stuff/>

In the former case you can easily process <product> based on its type
attribute at the time <product> is reported.

In the latter case, you have to push the events onto a stack, or
recursive peek ahead until you discover the type.


-- 
Andrew Welch
http://andrewjwelch.com