Is there any value in creating a pool of Dom4J SaxReader objects?

Question

I'm using Dom4J 1.4.2.

Right now my code creates a new SaxReader every time I want to parse a new XML document:

SAXReader reader = new SAXReader(  );

Is there any value in creating a pool of SaxReader objects and just reusing them? How much overhead is involved in creating a new SaxReader on every call?

My code could get one from the pool, parse the document then return it to the pool for another thread to use.

Answer 1

As with all so-called performance issues and urges to pool objects: are you experiencing an actual problem, or are you trying to prematurely optimize here? Rolling your own pooling in Java has been out of fashion since at least 2005.

I peeked at the source code of SAXReader, and this is the constructor:

  138       public SAXReader() {
  139       }

There are no instance initializers, and the real work is done in the read method.