sXML Library provides an API consisting of classes
and interfaces for reading (validating parses) and rendering (validating writes) of XML data in different formats and from various sources and to various targets.
Unlike in iXML Library, no XML documents are created in
DOM format and no DTDs (Document
Type Definitions) are supported. Instead, the nodes in the tree structure represented by the XML data
are processed in series and the current node can always be accessed. The node can be accessed using token-based or object-oriented methods. The classes and interfaces are documented in Class Builder.
Notes
If access to all nodes of an XML document in the memory is not required and no DTD is needed, sXML Library is an alternative to iXML Library with better performance. It also supports more XML formats and enables the handling of
JSON in ABAP programs.
The serial processing of XML data in sXML Library involves the
parsing and
rendering of each node, front to back, without
a preview. This is particularly clear in the parser method SKIP_NODE, which "skips" a node, but still
has to parse it and all its subnodes. This characteristic can be exploited to check whether data is well-formed and to test the copying of XML data to a writer.