August 2006 Report

Xerces-J

Work is just getting started on an implementation of StAX (JSR 173). A couple new contributors have volunteered to help out in this effort. This includes a student participating in the Google Summer of Code program who is currently working on the SAX and DOM implementations of the XMLStreamReader.

In July the committers agreed that it is time to move to a common serialization code base with Xalan and to deprecate Xerces' native serializer. The Xalan serializer started as a copy of the Xerces serializer but diverged over time and for years two similarly capable serializers were being developed. More effort was devoted to improving the performance and fixing bugs in the Xalan version and after a comparison of the two serializers in 2004 it became clear to the developers that moving to the Xalan serializer was the best way forward. We plan to work with the Xalan community to continue improving this code base.

Xerces-C

Bug and docs fixes for DOM Level 3 and new build system have now been completed (no known bugs). Work is continuing on an XInclude implementation. A DOM Events implementation has contributed and now needs review. We had hoped to release last quarter but this proved to be too optimistic. We hope to do a major release (3.0) in the next couple of months after XInlcude is completed.

Xerces-P

Xerces-P has been fully integrated into Xerces-C with the intention of becoming a sub-project of Xerces-C instead of a stand-alone project. The goal would be that all language bindings of Xerces-C would simply be sub-projects and not full projects. Xerces-P would keep its own mailing lists, but the web site's would be merged as well as the SVN repsoitories. Currently the website merging has not been started but the SVN merging is already completed.

The perl test-suite would then be adapted to become a general purpose test-suite of the full Xerces-C functionality. This has begun, but is only partially completed due to a lack of core Xerces-C knowledge on the part of the main Xerces-P developers.

XML Commons

We have expressed interest in pulling the commons code into Xerces. This is one of several options that the XML PMC and others are currently considering.

CLAs and fax machine

Every time we have to get a CLA off someone its ends up being a long and painful experience. It seems the fax machine has some issues! Normally I put this down to user error but this time the CLA came from someone who lived in my town and I personally saw them try and send it. Can we check out this fax machine and ensure its operating correctly?