What sort of processing overhead is encored when using Smooks to apply XSLT?
We carried out some profiling in order to get an answer to this very question. The scenario we used was purposely geared in favor of XSLT. The message being processed was very flat (not hierarchical) and was not normalized and the XSLT we chose to apply was very simple. This type of scenario is especially suited to Stream/SAX based XSL processing. What this profiling demonstrated was that in this scenario (worse case scenario) a 5% – 15% overhead is encored when comparing Smooks based application of XSLT to direct DOM based XSLT processing. However, when comparing DOM based application of XSLT (direct or via Smooks) to direct Stream/SAX based XSLT processing, we see that Stream/SAX based processing kicks ass in this type of scenario ([#SmooksFAQs-streamsaxsupport Smooks currently only supports DOM based processing]). The fact that Stream/DOM based processing can (given the right conditions) outperform DOM based processing is a long known fact. This approach to profiling gives users of
