Best way to create an XML document

Depends on the requirements IM

Creating via DM can advantageous if further manipulation via the DM is
required. This will remove the overhead of creating a string and the initial
parse to a DM object.

If you data source is correctly encoded and standardised you can create XML
documents more efficiently by using strings.

1) Creating a XML string by hand can become cumbersome, if XML is
huge. Maintaining the correct parent child relationship for a huge
document can be difficult, if done by hand (imagine a document of size
50 MB). This would lead to difficult debugging. Using a DM API can do
this inherently in memory.
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Program logic can overcome the "by-hand" issue.


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2) It's difficult to remember correct XML name conventions if done by
hand.
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for e.g., <9abcis an invalid XML name (because it starts with a number).
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There are more rules for XML names.
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Using DM API does this automatically.


I guess this depends entirely on experience of the developer in regards to
XML.

3) Using DM API can check well-formedness of entities (like, &abc;
etc). Doing this by hand in a string can become difficult.


This certainly is a major benefit; like a interpretted language you get to
see where you go wrong as you're constructing the DM object.