By default, xerces runs with errorChecking set to true:

(times in nanoseconds, 500 iterations)

errorChecking(true) ice: auctionMonitor

lifecycle took 9709000 RENDER: 8293000
lifecycle took 9981000 RENDER: 8481000
lifecycle took 9542000 RENDER: 8085000
lifecycle took 9827000 RENDER: 8356000
lifecycle took 9794000 RENDER: 8374000
lifecycle took 10348000 RENDER: 8960000
lifecycle took 9782000 RENDER: 8310000
lifecycle took 10174000 RENDER: 8751000
lifecycle took 10328000 RENDER: 8603000
lifecycle took 9965000 RENDER: 8443000


errorChecking(false) ice: auctionMonitor:

lifecycle took 9419000 RENDER: 7985000
lifecycle took 9375000 RENDER: 7998000
lifecycle took 12394000 RENDER: 10994000
lifecycle took 9798000 RENDER: 8356000
lifecycle took 9367000 RENDER: 7978000
lifecycle took 9363000 RENDER: 7843000
lifecycle took 9409000 RENDER: 8021000
lifecycle took 9292000 RENDER: 7936000
lifecycle took 9438000 RENDER: 8047000
lifecycle took 10291000 RENDER: 8296000

5% improvement on the average.

This can be enabled by the following in DOMResponseWriter:

        document = DOCUMENT_BUILDER.newDocument();
        ((com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.dom.CoreDocumentImpl) document).setErrorChecking(false);

Perhaps this should be the default, but configurable with a context parameter.