[XML-SIG] 4XSLT Performance Problems with Large Files

[Dieter Maurer]

Thomas B. Passin writes:
 > ...
 > Results:
 > 
 > processor       time to transform, sec          remarks
 > msxsl                    7
 > saxon                    10
 > 4xslt.py                 167                                Python 1.5.2
 > 4xslt.py                 201                                Python 2.1.1
 > 4xslt.bat          gave up at 253                     Py 1.5.2 (see below)
 > 4xslt.bat          gave up when memory ran out  Py 2.1.1 (see below)

Your results are compatible with my experience.

  I used 4xslt to process DocBook/XML files. It has been far too slow
  (and contained lots of bugs). I switched to saxon and got
  speed improvements of more than an order of magnitude (less bugs, too).

  My observation seems to indicate that "saxon" needs most of
  its time with startup (reading the DocBook stylesheets).
  The document size seems to be almost irrelevant. It takes
  about the same time to transform a 10 kB document than a
  several hundred kB document.
  For 4xslt (with "pDomlette", to be fair, as "cDomlette" did not support
  entity references at that time), processing time apparently
  grew more than linearly with document size.


Dieter