splitter, VTD-XML can split sub-elements in an XML document and dump each into a separate XML document. As an assembler, VTD-XML can "cut" chunks out of multiple XML documents and assemble them into a new XML document. XML editor/eraser Used as an editor/eraser, VTD-XML can directly edit/erase the underlying byte content of the XML text, provided that the token length is wider than the intended new content. An immediate benefit of this approach is that the application can immediately reuse the original VTD and LC. In contrast, when using VTD-XML to incrementally update an XML document, an application needs to reparse the updated document before the application can process it. An editor can be made smart enough to track the location of each token, permitting new, longer tokens to replace existing, shorter tokens by merely addressing the new token in separate memory outside that used to store the original document. Likewise, when reordering the document, element text does not need to be copied; only the LCs need to be updated. When a complete, contiguous XML document is needed, such as when saving it, the disparate parts can be reassembled into a new, contiguous document. Other benefits VTD-XML also pioneers the non-blocking, stateless XPath evaluation approach. Weaknesses VTD-XML also exhibits a few noticeable shortcomings: As an XML parser, it does not support external entities declared in the DTD. As a file format, it increases the document size by about 30% to 50%. As an API, it is not compatible with DOM, SAX or StAX. It is difficult to support certain validation techniques, employed by DTD and XML Schema (e.g., default attributes and elements), that require modifications to the XML instances being parsed. Areas of applications General-purpose replacement for DOM or SAX Because of VTD-XML's performance and memory advantages, it covers a larger portion of XML use cases than either DOM or SAX. Compared to DOM, VTD-XML processes bigger (3x~5x) XML documents for the same amount of physical memory at about 3 to 10 times the performance. Compared to SAX, VTD-XML provides random access and XPath support and outperforms SAX by at least 2x. XPath over huge XML documents The extended edition of VTD-XML combining with 64-bit JVM makes possible XPath-based XML processing over huge XML documents (up to 256 GB) in size. For SOA/WS/XML security The combination of VTD-XML's high performance and incremental-update capability makes it essential to achieve the desired