[jdom-interest] Re: jdom comparison with dom4j

graham glass graham-glass at mindspring.com
Wed Aug 8 01:58:46 PDT 2001


hi dennis,

could you give an example of an operation that
is easier to do using JDOM than using DOM4J?

cheers,
graham

-----Original Message-----
From: jdom-interest-admin at jdom.org
[mailto:jdom-interest-admin at jdom.org]On Behalf Of Dennis Sosnoski
Sent: Tuesday, August 07, 2001 7:11 PM
To: Jane Riese
Cc: jdom-interest at jdom.org
Subject: Re: [jdom-interest] Re: jdom comparison with dom4j


Hi Jane,

I've worked with both, and used both in performance comparisons currently
published
at http://www.sosnoski.com/opensrc/xmlbench/index.html. I'm currently trying
to get
an updated series of tests completed and published, and should have that
available
soon. Here's my take on the two:

JDOM strives for simplicity and protection of the user from doing things
which don't
fit XML, while dom4j puts the emphasis on flexibility. dom4j is more the
traditional
library approach, exposing as many options as possible to allow
customization for a
particular use, while JDOM wants to make basic XML operations easy.

If you don't know much about XML and just want to do fairly conventional
things with
it (build a document to be serialized out as text, read a document and
manipulate it
in memory, etc.) JDOM is probably the better choice. If you have a good
knowledge of
XML and may want to do something "tricky" (parse a streamed document with
on-the-fly
processing, use custom Element/Attribute structures, share the in-memory
document
with DOM-based code, etc.), dom4j is probably the better choice.

JDOM has the advantage that it's in a JSR to possibly become a Java standard
extension. dom4j has the advantage of being more stable and mature for use
in
production environments (the JDOM interface is still changing, while dom4j
appears
stable except for added methods to expose new functionality). In terms of
performance, there are no big differences between either of these (or
between these
and DOM models, for that matter), though dom4j looks better by most
measures.

I'm very interested in hearing reactions to this summary, and I've donned my
flame-suit. ;-)

  - Dennis

Jane Riese wrote:

> Hi -
>
>     I have been using jdom for the past year and
> am pleased with the reduction in code and ease
> of use.  My boss has asked me to look at dom4j
> as an alternative.
>
>    Can anyone give me a first-hand comparison of jdom and
> dom4j? What are the advantages and intended usage
> of  each of these libraries?
>
>   Thanks,
>
> Jane Riese
>
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