Processing XML (Time Concerns)

[jeffnyman]

This is purely an experiential question in nature, so I apologize for
its clear lack of focus.

What I'm curious about is if any of you have been using REXML (or
perhaps another XML solution for Ruby) to parse and modify XML files in
memory. If so, what sorts of processing times have you found?

I ask this in the context that I have some pretty sparse processing
being done on an XML file that is about 1.5 MB in size. This is, by
necessity, tree-based parsing because I need to modify some attributes
and elements as the parsing occurs. This kind of processing takes well
over an hour.

I know the details of how long something takes can vary vastly by the
details of the processing is being done but I'm just curious if people
have done in-memory processing of XML (where the XML file is at least 1
MB in size or greater) and how long that has taken.

- Jeff

 

[Richard Conroy]

What I'm curious about is if any of you have been using REXML (or
perhaps another XML solution for Ruby) to parse and modify XML files in
memory. If so, what sorts of processing times have you found?

Ask Tim Bray:
http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/
He is doing some pretty serious work in this regard.

I have seen some benchmarks that put REXML processing at being
about 10 times slower than an equivalent java mechanism:

http://www.pankaj-k.net/archives/2005/11/ruby_or_java_a.html

REXML is the 'user-friendly' and cross platform ruby parser.
When you need hardcore performance, you need to check out
one of the alternative Ruby parsers (typically implemented in
C). YMMV.

 

[Tim Perrett]

REXML is the 'user-friendly' and cross platform ruby parser.
When you need hardcore performance, you need to check out
one of the alternative Ruby parsers (typically implemented in
C). YMMV.

For sure, checkout libxml - it is a great deal faster than REXML. Tim.