Empty tag with attribute effective for parsing?

Hi,

I have data(texts), which belong to a specific name
By design there are two possibilities how i could solve this:
1.
<stringtable>
   <string id="Greetings" val="Happy new year"/>
   <string id="Greetings2" val="Happy birthday"/>
</stringtable>

2.
<stringtable>
   <string id="Greetings">Happy new year</string>
   <string id="Greetings2">Happy birthday</string>
</stringtable>

Which of these two possibilitites would be more effective to parse?(Xerces
c++, two parsing methods are used, SAX and DOM)
I would be very happy if you could help me with that.

Sebastian Rohde