XML and Java: XML Productivity Kit for Java (XPK4J by IBM)

URL: http://www.alphaWorks.ibm.com/formula/xmlproductivity/

The XML Productivity Kit for Java was released in mid November 1998 from the alphaWorks folks at IBM, along with eight other XML and Java related freeware. At first glance, XPK4J appears to provide capabilities similar to JavaSoft's XML Library. The above URL includes overview, download, FAQ (empty at the time of writing), and requirements. [This section will be updated when the author has an opportunity to explore XPK4J directly.]

"XML Productivity Kit for Java (XPK4J) is a key ingredient in the next wave of XML processing productivity. It contains a variety of tools and protocols for enabling simple yet advanced XML processing applications. One of the pieces of this kit is to enable XML processing in a visual builder such as IBM's VisualAge for Java. This JavaBean protocol for XML processing sets a foundation on which advanced document transformation components can be built and wired together. While there are numerous ways of connecting XML JavaBeans together, the initial offering of XPK4J JavaBeans encapsulate the two current industry standards: the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) Document Object Model (DOM) and the XML Organization's Simple API for XML (SAX). DOM is a tree based API for handling XML documents whereas SAX is a stream based protocol.

Both DOM and SAX have been encapsulated in a set of basic JavaBeans that can be used to build other XML JavaBeans and interconnect between these two standards. The important XPK4J JavaBeans in the set are DOM and SAX filter classes suitable for extending for specific needs; DOM and SAX adapter classes useful for converting the W3C DOM and SAX API into XPK4J DOM and SAX JavaBeans equivalents; as well as adapters to convert from one protocol to another. In addition, the XML Parser in Java parser has been wrapped in two beans that act as DOM and SAX sources in the XPK4J system."

XML and Java: Java Project X (formerly XML Library from JavaSoft)
XML and Java: The Perfect Pair: Part 2: Java APIs for XML
XML and Java: DOM Level 1: Java XML API Definitions (W3C)