XML parsing
There are two major types
of application programming interfaces (APIs) that can be used to
parse XML:
-
Tree-based APIs map the XML document
to a tree structure. The major tree-based API is the Document Object
Model (DOM) maintained by W3C. A DOM parser is particularly useful
if you are working with a deeply-nested document that must be traversed
multiple times.For more information about the DOM parser, see the W3C Document Object Model page
.PowerBuilder provides the PowerBuilder Document Object Model (PBDOM)
extension to enable you to manipulate complex XML documents. For
more information about PBDOM, see Application Techniques and
the PowerBuilder Extension Reference. -
Event-based APIs use callbacks to report events,
such as the start and end of elements, to the calling application,
and the application handles those events. These APIs provide faster,
lower-level access to the XML and are most efficient when extracting
data from an XML document in a single traversal.For more information about the best-known event-driven parser,
SAX (Simple API for XML), see the SAX page
.
Xerces parser
PowerBuilder includes software developed by the Apache Software Foundation
(http://www.apache.org/).
The XML services for DataWindow objects are built on the Apache Xerces-C++ parser,
which conforms to both DOM and SAX specifications and is portable
across Windows and UNIX platforms. For more information about SAX,
see the Xerces C++ Parser page
.