A class representing a node in a meta-data tree, which implements the org.w3c.dom.Element interface and additionally allows for the storage of non-textual objects via the getUserObject and setUserObject methods.

This class is not intended to be used for general XML processing. In particular, Element nodes created within the Image I/O API are not compatible with those created by Sun's standard implementation of the org.w3.dom API. In particular, the implementation is tuned for simple uses and may not perform well for intensive processing.

Namespaces are ignored in this implementation. The terms "tag name" and "node name" are always considered to be synonymous. Note: The DOM Level 3 specification added a number of new methods to the Node, Element and Attr interfaces that are not of value to the IIOMetadataNode implementation or specification. Calling such methods on an IIOMetadataNode, or an Attr instance returned from an IIOMetadataNode will result in a DOMException being thrown.

implements Element, NodeList