Java XML Parser Performance guide with Large Files - OutOfMemoryError on Specific Nodes
I'm stuck on something that should probably be simple. I'm working on a personal project and I'm currently working with a large XML file (around 500MB) that contains multiple nested elements, and I've encountered severe performance optimization while parsing it using Java's built-in `DocumentBuilder`... When I try to parse the document, I get an `OutOfMemoryError` specifically when processing nodes that have many attributes. I've been trying to optimize the parsing by using the following code: ```java DocumentBuilderFactory factory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance(); DocumentBuilder builder = factory.newDocumentBuilder(); Document doc = builder.parse(new File("path/to/large.xml")); NodeList nodes = doc.getElementsByTagName("SpecificNode"); for (int i = 0; i < nodes.getLength(); i++) { Node node = nodes.item(i); // Process node attributes } ``` To troubleshoot, I attempted to increase the JVM heap size using `-Xmx2g` but it still crashes when hitting specific nodes. I also tried to switch to a SAX parser, thinking it might handle memory better, but the complexity of handling state and callbacks was significantly more than I anticipated. Is there a way to efficiently parse such large XML files using a DOM parser while handling memory issues? Or should I stick with SAX and try to refactor my approach to fit that model better? Any insights or best practices would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance! I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.