XSL Imports - Xalan vs LibXSL

In BaseElements 3.0.5 and later there is an extra radio button choice in the Setup for "XSL Type". This is an option to select from two different available XSL import engines. The difference between the options are :

Xalan

Xalan is the name for the internal FileMaker XSL engine that is built into the Import Script Step. It is generally going to be a slower import than LibXSL but will also import very large solutions that will cause LibXSL to run out of memory. However, we have also seen situations where Xalan would cause a FileMaker crash where LibXSL will manage the same import just fine.

LibXSL

LibXSL is the import engine included in the BaseElements plugin. It will generally be faster than Xalan because it's processing the XML into CSV files which are quicker to import than XML. In some smaller solutions you may not notice the difference at all though. We have found that due to limitations in the plugin environment that we can run out of memory when trying to import some very large solutions using LibXSL. The plugin environment inside FileMaker is limited to either 2 or 4 GB or Ram ( depending on OS ), regardless of how much memory is inside the machine. If you are getting out of memory errors, switch back to Xalan for that solution.

Auto

The Auto setting is the default, and this option will try to use the faster LibXSL engine inside the plugin. If it encounters a failure at any point, it will retry with Xalan and after 2 failures will do all subsequent import steps with Xalan.

What to choose

The default option is Auto option will be fine for most people, as that will work in most situations and is the faster option. LibXSL though doesn't have access to as much memory as Xalan, so if you get out of memory errors or other failures when trying to import, please re-try the import with the setting set to Xalan before reporting an issue with the import.