[OSM-dev] SAX XML parsing recommendations?

[Nick Whitelegg]

Hello everyone,

Does anyone have any recommendations for reliable and (ideally) fast SAX xml 
parsers with an intuitive api? I need something to convert planet.osm into 
SQL but have run into the following problems:

the PHP SAX parser: seems to be unreliable and runs out of memory easily

REXML (Ruby): seems to work, but takes a long time (27 hours to get the UK out 
of the April planet.osm. Oddly for a SAX parser, it took considerably longer 
to get the whole UK out compared to a small tile of 0.1 by 0.1 degrees - this 
suggests high usage of memory though my script uses as little as possible)

Ideally it would be in php, ruby, c++ but I'm willing to try anything....

Nick