Virtual Token Descriptor for eXtensible Markup Language (VTD-XML) refers to a collection of cross-platform XML processing technologies centered on a non-extractive[1][2] XML, "document-centric" parsing technique called Virtual Token Descriptor (VTD).
Traditionally, a lexical analyzer represents tokens (the small units of indivisible character values) as discrete string objects.
Virtual Token Descriptor (VTD) applies the concept of non-extractive, document-centric parsing to XML processing.
Virtually all the core benefits of VTD-XML are inherent to non-extractive, document-centric parsing which provides these characteristics: Combining those characteristics permits thinking of XML purely as syntax (bits, bytes, offsets, lengths, fragments, namespace-compensated fragments, and document composition) instead of the serialization/deserialization of objects.
To this end, XimpleWare has introduced VTD+XML as a binary packaging format combining VTD, LC and the XML text.
The combination of VTD-XML's high performance and incremental-update capability makes it essential[19][20][21] to achieve the desired level of quality of service for SOA/WS/XML security applications.
All those applications perform the basic "store and forward" operations for which retaining the original XML is critical for minimizing latency.
XML documents stored this way can be loaded into memory to be queried, updated, or edited without the overhead of parsing/re-serialization.
[22] It is worth noting that data binding discussed in the article mentioned above needs to be implemented by the application: VTD-XML itself only offers accessors.