Feeding DOMs to XSLT Processors

[Michael Harry Scepaniak <ihispanic@xxxxxxxxx>]

All,

Somewhere along the way, I got confused.  Up until yesterday afternoon,
I was of the thought that XSLT Processors such as XT, Xalan, SAXON, and
Oracle's XML Parser for Java would accept standard DOM (Document/Node)
objects as input.  But, after having gone through all of them, I now am
frustrated by the apparent fact that they are all file-centric.  I'll
explain my situation.

We're building a Java application that contains a piece that retrieves
data from a mainframe via TCP/IP.  The mainframe sends a
non-XML-formatted data string which we dynamically transform into XML
-- a DOM object.  Yippee!  The problem appears when we attempt to apply
a stylesheet to the XML data.

Assuming we parse the XSL stylesheet into a DOM object upon start-up,
we want to pass the just-generated data DOM and XSL DOM to the XSLT
processor and get back a stream of HTML.  But none of the
above-mentioned XSLT processors provide publicly-accessible methods
that accept DOM arguments.

SAXON doesn't use the DOM.  Oracle's XML Parser for Java uses a
somewhat customized version of the DOM.  Xalan and XT appear to use
standard DOMs, but we'll have to modify the source classes a little
because their pre- and/or post-processing logic isn't all publicly
accessible.  And, for several reasons, that's not something with which
we're entirely comfortable.  

Is there a reason why the API's don't readily provide for DOM (as
opposed to file) inputs?  Am I showing my ignorance?  Accessing the XML
data and XST stylesheets from the filesystem on demand isn't a good
option for us, and I don't believe that any sort of production system
that needs responsive performance could put up with it.  But I'd like
to get some thoughts on the subject.  Thank you are any and all input.


Mike.....
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger.
http://im.yahoo.com


 XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list