JAXB sucks

Allow me to enumerate the many ways I hate JAXB. JAXB is an XML data binding tool for Java; that is, it generates code to make using XML more Java-like. This is great in concept. In reality it is not so great:

  • Two days away from your project due date, JAXB lets you know that it isn’t mindful of the method size limits in the JVM. Javac tells you: “code too large.”
  • There’s a limit to method sizes in the JVM?
  • Upon examining a generated class, you discover 25k lines of utter garbage. Things like the same if-then clause being repeated twice in a row.
  • Turning off generation of the validator, or the unmarshaller, or the validating unmarshaller does have the effect of reducing code size, at a cost of generating code that doesn’t compile.
  • Or if it compiles, it throws a runtime exception when you use it.
  • The object hierarchy is all screwed up, such that a concrete implementation type may implement a (JAXB internal) interface that is not also implemented by the corresponding abstract interface (the two are supposed to be interchangeable).
  • You have to do naughty proprietary things to make type substitution work.
  • Creates a new namespace prefix for practically every element even though I only use 3 namespaces in the entire document.

I only just learned about XMLBeans. Dammit.

2 Replies to “JAXB sucks”

  1. Re: Ha ha!

    I don’t know what you are talking about. Clearly these are the two best technologies that mankind has ever invented. After anything made by Microsoft, of course.

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