XML::Xerces is the Perl API to the Apache project's Xerces XML parser. It is implemented using the Xerces C++ API, and it provides access to most of the C++ API from Perl. Because it is based on Xerces-C, XML::Xerces provides a validating XML parser that makes it easy to give your application the ability to read and write XML data. Classes are provided for parsing, generating, manipulating, and validating XML documents. XML::Xerces is faithful to the XML 1.0 recommendation and associated standards (DOM levels 1, 2, and 3, SAX 1 and 2, Namespaces, and W3C XML Schema). The parser provides high performance, modularity, and scalability, and provides full support for Unicode. XML::Xerces implements the vast majority of the Xerces-C API (if you notice any discrepancies please mail the list). The exception is some functions in the C++ API which either have better Perl counterparts (such as file I/O) or which manipulate internal C++ information that has no role in the Perl module. The majority of the API is created automatically using Simplified Wrapper Interface Generator (SWIG). However, care has been taken to make most method invocations natural to perl programmers, so a number of rough C++ edges have been smoothed over (See the Special Perl API Features section).