I checked and JAXB does the same thing to support the binding file. xjc loads it into a DOM tree, then applies the bindings using xpath, then parses the modified DOM. To answer your question though, I think XSModel is flawed in a number of ways, and IMO we need to move away from it. These include | [1] not very extensible | [2] incomplete / buggy | [3] tied to xerces | [4] language neutral API that is a bitch to work with in java | [5] can't use it to write schema | | | The sun jaxb implementation has a seperate model for reading a writing. They externalized their reading implementation, its called XSOM: | | https://xsom.dev.java.net/ | | See the design overview here: | https://xsom.dev.java.net/implementation.html | | For writing they basically implement a light weight model that only writes what they generate. | | I think we should look into switching to XSOM because it doesn't suffer from problems 1-4. It is quite efficient, uses SAX, and it supports customization using visitors. | | Although, I don't think this solves the overall problem in the java world, which is the lack of a standard XML Schema api that supports both reading and writing. The only thing close to it I have seen is the eclipse schema model, but it is tied to tons of bloated dependencies. | | -Jason View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=3978265#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...