It would be advisable to process this file chunks at a time. e.g. is the file database generated? If so it probably consists of lots of 'rows' which are document fragments that can be processed by themselves as they are parsed then garbage collected.
 
Often massive XML documents are database-generated or contain regular repeating fragments (like 'rows' from a 'table') which can be processed one by one and so not requiring the entire document to be in RAM at once.

There's an entry in the FAQ

http://dom4j.org/faq.html

entitled "How does dom4j handle very large XML documents?"

http://dom4j.org/faq.html#How%20does%20dom4j%20handle%20very%20large%20XML%2
0documents?

The trick is to use ElementHandler's to be notified as certain parts of the
documents are complete (say a 'row') and then prune it from the tree via
element.detach() so that it can be garbage collected.

There's also an example in dom4j/src/samples/LargeDocumentDemo.java and
LargeDocumentDemo2.java

James
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2001 2:44 AM
Subject: [dom4j-user] how big can dom4j handle?

How big an xml file can dom4j handle?  I'm planning to process a 19MB file with my app.  Any danger?

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