I personally think that mapping to DOM as an escape hatch would be
useful in practice, like you said.
But because of the schedule and so on, we can't make this kind of a big
change for the next release. So I consider this to be an expert group
decision in the next version of the JAXB spec.
regards,
--
Kohsuke KAWAGUCHI 408-276-7063 (x17063)
Sun Microsystems kohsuke.kawaguchi_at_sun.com