A method and apparatus are provided for processing a representation of an XML document to create a sequence of contiguous bytes for transfer from a source to a destination. The method includes the steps of parsing the representation of the XML document into a set of information items, determining a relationship among the information items from the representation of the XML document, assigning an operation code to each information element based upon the determined relationship, where each assigned operation code defines how the associated information should be interpreted at the destination andforming the operation codes and information items into a sequence of contiguous bytes suitable for transfer from the source to the destination, said byte sequence not depending upon any memory address assigned to the byte sequence.