GerixSoft

What is the fastest XSLT processor on the planet?

• Is it MSXML because it is implemented in C/C++??
• Is it .NET XslCompiledTransform because it compiles XSLT stylesheets??
• Or perhaps it is Xalan XSLTC :)

Why just not benchmark...

As input XML lets take four volumes of War and Peace of Lev Tolstoy from www.lib.ru, copy/paste them into Word, and save as one Word 2003 XML. This would make 14mb sample XML file :)

For XSLT lets take pipeline of three identity modes.

• main.xsl would look like:

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
  
  <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:exsl="http://exslt.org/common">
  
      <xsl:output method="xml" omit-xml-declaration="no" indent="no" encoding="UTF-8"/>
  
      <xsl:include href="mode1.xsl"/>
      <xsl:include href="mode2.xsl"/>
      <xsl:include href="mode3.xsl"/>
  
      <xsl:template match="/">
          <xsl:variable name="mode1">
              <xsl:apply-templates mode="mode1" select="node()"/>
          </xsl:variable>
          <xsl:variable name="mode2">
              <xsl:apply-templates mode="mode2" select="exsl:node-set($mode1)/node()"/>
          </xsl:variable>
          <xsl:variable name="mode3">
              <xsl:apply-templates mode="mode3" select="exsl:node-set($mode2)/node()"/>
          </xsl:variable>
  
          <xsl:copy-of select="exsl:node-set($mode3)/node()"/>
      </xsl:template>
  
  </xsl:stylesheet>

• mode1.xsl

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
  
  <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
  
      <xsl:template priority="-9" mode="mode1" match="@*|node()">
          <xsl:copy>
              <xsl:apply-templates mode="mode1" select="@*|node()"/>
          </xsl:copy>
      </xsl:template>
  
  </xsl:stylesheet>
  

• mode2.xsl

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
  
  <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
  
      <xsl:template priority="-9" mode="mode2" match="@*|node()">
          <xsl:copy>
              <xsl:apply-templates mode="mode2" select="@*|node()"/>
          </xsl:copy>
      </xsl:template>
  
  </xsl:stylesheet>

• mode3.xsl

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
  
  <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
  
      <xsl:template priority="-9" mode="mode3" match="@*|node()">
          <xsl:copy>
              <xsl:apply-templates mode="mode3" select="@*|node()"/>
          </xsl:copy>
      </xsl:template>
  
  </xsl:stylesheet>
  

then write simple VBS/C#/Java code for benchmarking MSXML/XslCompiledTransform/Xalan

And results are:

• MSXML — ~10s14s
• XslCompiledTransform — ~8s
• Saxon — ~5s
• Xalan — 20s
• XSLTC never finishes :)

Quite surprising winner, isn't it? In spite of Java slower to C/C++ and not compiled XSLTs...