Streaming Transformations for XML
Streaming Transformations for XML (STX) is an XML transformation language intended as a high-speed, low memory consumption alternative to XSLT.
Introduction
STX is an XML standard for efficient processing of stream-based XML. As we will discover XSLT is not well suited to stream based processing and STX fills this niche.
Conventional XML processing involves loading the entire XML document into memory for use. This is as opposed to SAX which streams XML events such as "open element" "close element" "text node" (and so on) so that other software that can begin interpreting these immediately -- before the end of the file is reached. Unfortunately some software can't effectively use individual XML segments this way and must stockpile these events, build up the whole document, and then begin processing. So is the case with XSLT. Because XSLT's XPath can select any node throughout the document it must have the entire document available in memory. This could be perceived as a bottleneck.
STX only allows queries based on nodes immediately surrounding the current node. This architectural decision means that STX is faster than XSLT and it can start transforming and outputting SAX event nodes as they arrive. Also, the memory use is significantly lower than that of XSLT.
If your XML transformation needs can be met by STX, use it.
Standards
STX's query language is called STXPath.
Implementations of STX are available in Java and Perl.
Similar projects
Unlike STX which is declared using an XML syntax, these two projects associate SAX events with callback functions.
External links
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