ANN: TRaX & XML Serializer APIs Posted

["Scott Boag/CAM/Lotus" <Scott_Boag@xxxxxxxxx>]

http://trax.openxml.org/

A number of producers of XSLT processors have been working on an vendor
neutral API called TRaX (TRansformations for Xml), and an API for
serializing DOM trees  and SAX events to a stream (defined by Assaf Arkin
from ExOffice).  TRaX defines an interface for processing transformation
instructions, performing tree transformations via a transformer, and
sending the result to SAX handlers, and interfacing to a Serializer if
needed.  While this interface is modeled on the XSLT process, it should be
generic enough to use with many types of transformations besides XSLT.
TRaX uses and is dependent on SAX2.  TRaX is a Java API right now, but it
would be great to get a C++, COM, and Perl version as well.

The mission here is to make it much easier for people to write applications
that are portable between XML transformation implementations, and to create
a common model for XML transformations that will lower the cost of entry
for basic services.

Right now the package names are trax.* and serialize.*.  I have no good
idea where the eventual home might be, though there has been much
discussion about this.  What's mainly important right now is to get the
definition, consensus, and experimental implementation going.

By no means are these interfaces or the model cast in stone.  We think they
are a good start on a vender neutral API that all implementers can
eventually agree upon.  We are hoping to unify with the good work that Kyle
Downey and Amber Archer Consulting has done with SAX/T, and hope we can use
the best ideas of each proposed API.

I sincerely hope that the XML community will join in on this work, so that
we can create the best possible API.  You don't have to be an implementer,
but you probably want to have good familiarity with XML, and have used some
of the XSLT processor APIs out there.

Many many thanks to Mike Kay, Oracle, Sun, Assaf Arkin & Keith Visco
(ExOffice), and many others who have been working on this.  And many thanks
to Exolab (ExOffice) for kindly donating the bandwidth and machinery for
this site (please note that TRaX has no affiliation with Exolab).

Scott Boag
Lotus Development


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