Daniel Veillard has released version 2.6.1 of libxml2, the open source XML C library for Gnome. This releases fixes lots of bugs introduced in the 2.6 tree.
Peter J. Jones has posted xmlwrapp 0.4.4, a C++ library for working with XML built on top of Daniel Veillard's libxml2. This release now works with libxml 2.6. xmlwrapp is published under a BSD license.
XML Benchmark 1.2.2, a C/C++/Java toolset for benchmarking XML parsers including libxml2, Xerces, Oracle XDK, Expat, RXP, QT, and Crimson, has been released. Benchmarks include parsing (native, SAX, DOM), DOM manipulation, schema validation, XSL transformation, and XML signature and encryption. Version 1.2.2 adds support for XML Security 1.2 and arabica.
I've learned to treat benchmarks with a 20-pound bag of rock salt until proven otherwise. However, this product gets at least one thing right. It lets you plug in "Any valid XML file" so you can test parsers on the kind of documents you're interested in rather than on whatever the benchmark vendor has. Most parsers exhibit wildly varying performance characteristics depending on the type of XML document (large or small, record-like or narrative, many attributes or few attributes, etc.). It's not clear whether or not this parser can test well-formed but invalid documents.