The Java EE 5 Tutorial

Attributes and Namespaces

Attributes are reported by a StAX processor using lookup methods and strings in the cursor interface, and Attribute and Namespace events in the iterator interface. Note here that namespaces are treated as attributes, although namespaces are reported separately from attributes in both the cursor and iterator APIs. Note also that namespace processing is optional for StAX processors. See the StAX specification for complete information about namespace binding and optional namespace processing.