This class is very poorly written and needs a complete rewrite.

e.g.

• It is composed via a builder pattern, but the built objects are not immutable!!!
  • Want to create a PersistentResourceXMLDescription once, to be reused by multiple children?  Sorry, you can't.
• The parser/writer implementations are spaghetti code
  • Methods are not symmetrical, e.g. methods enter/exit without fully reading/writing an XML block
• It lacks support for common XML schema patterns
  • .e.g

  • <parent default="foo"><child name="foo"/><child name="bar"/></parent>