diff --git a/src/ooxml/java/org/apache/poi/util/DocumentHelper.java b/src/ooxml/java/org/apache/poi/util/DocumentHelper.java
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0246d9a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/ooxml/java/org/apache/poi/util/DocumentHelper.java
@@ -0,0 +1,122 @@
+/* ====================================================================
+   Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
+   contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
+   this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
+   The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
+   (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
+   the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
+
+       http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
+
+   Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
+   distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
+   WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
+   See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
+   limitations under the License.
+==================================================================== */
+
+package org.apache.poi.util;
+
+import java.io.IOException;
+import java.io.InputStream;
+import java.lang.reflect.Method;
+
+import javax.xml.XMLConstants;
+import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder;
+import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory;
+import javax.xml.parsers.ParserConfigurationException;
+import javax.xml.stream.events.Namespace;
+
+import org.w3c.dom.Document;
+import org.w3c.dom.Element;
+import org.xml.sax.SAXException;
+
+public final class DocumentHelper {
+    private static POILogger logger = POILogFactory.getLogger(DocumentHelper.class);
+    
+    private DocumentHelper() {}
+
+    /**
+     * Creates a new document builder, with sensible defaults
+     */
+    public static synchronized DocumentBuilder newDocumentBuilder() {
+        try {
+            DocumentBuilder documentBuilder = documentBuilderFactory.newDocumentBuilder();
+            documentBuilder.setEntityResolver(SAXHelper.IGNORING_ENTITY_RESOLVER);
+            return documentBuilder;
+        } catch (ParserConfigurationException e) {
+            throw new IllegalStateException("cannot create a DocumentBuilder", e);
+        }
+    }
+
+    private static final DocumentBuilderFactory documentBuilderFactory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
+    static {
+        documentBuilderFactory.setNamespaceAware(true);
+        documentBuilderFactory.setValidating(false);
+        trySetSAXFeature(documentBuilderFactory, SAXHelper.FEATURE_SECURE_PROCESSING, true);
+        trySetXercesSecurityManager(documentBuilderFactory);
+    }
+
+    private static void trySetSAXFeature(DocumentBuilderFactory documentBuilderFactory, String feature, boolean enabled) {
+        try {
+            documentBuilderFactory.setFeature(feature, enabled);
+        } catch (Exception e) {
+            logger.log(POILogger.INFO, "SAX Feature unsupported", feature, e);
+        }
+    }
+    private static void trySetXercesSecurityManager(DocumentBuilderFactory documentBuilderFactory) {
+        // Try built-in JVM one first, standalone if not
+        for (String securityManagerClassName : new String[] {
+                "com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.util.SecurityManager",
+                "org.apache.xerces.util.SecurityManager"
+        }) {
+            try {
+                Object mgr = Class.forName(securityManagerClassName).newInstance();
+                Method setLimit = mgr.getClass().getMethod("setEntityExpansionLimit", Integer.TYPE);
+                setLimit.invoke(mgr, 4096);
+                documentBuilderFactory.setAttribute("http://apache.org/xml/properties/security-manager", mgr);
+                // Stop once one can be setup without error
+                return;
+            } catch (Exception e) {
+                logger.log(POILogger.INFO, "SAX Security Manager could not be setup", e);
+            }
+        }
+    }
+
+    /**
+     * Parses the given stream via the default (sensible)
+     * DocumentBuilder
+     * @param inp Stream to read the XML data from
+     * @return the parsed Document 
+     */
+    public static Document readDocument(InputStream inp) throws IOException, SAXException {
+        return newDocumentBuilder().parse(inp);
+    }
+
+    // must only be used to create empty documents, do not use it for parsing!
+    private static final DocumentBuilder documentBuilderSingleton = newDocumentBuilder();
+
+    /**
+     * Creates a new DOM Document
+     */
+    public static synchronized Document createDocument() {
+        return documentBuilderSingleton.newDocument();
+    }
+
+    /**
+     * Adds a namespace declaration attribute to the given element.
+     */
+    public static void addNamespaceDeclaration(Element element, String namespacePrefix, String namespaceURI) {
+        element.setAttributeNS(XMLConstants.XMLNS_ATTRIBUTE_NS_URI,
+                XMLConstants.XMLNS_ATTRIBUTE + ':' + namespacePrefix,
+                namespaceURI);
+    }
+
+    /**
+     * Adds a namespace declaration attribute to the given element.
+     */
+    public static void addNamespaceDeclaration(Element element, Namespace namespace) {
+        addNamespaceDeclaration(element, namespace.getPrefix(), namespace.getNamespaceURI());
+    }
+
+}
diff --git a/src/ooxml/java/org/apache/poi/util/SAXHelper.java b/src/ooxml/java/org/apache/poi/util/SAXHelper.java
index b69225d..f2e2ffc 100644
--- a/src/ooxml/java/org/apache/poi/util/SAXHelper.java
+++ b/src/ooxml/java/org/apache/poi/util/SAXHelper.java
@@ -25,9 +25,13 @@
 import org.dom4j.Document;
 import org.dom4j.DocumentException;
 import org.dom4j.io.SAXReader;
+import javax.xml.parsers.ParserConfigurationException;
+import javax.xml.parsers.SAXParserFactory;
+
 import org.xml.sax.EntityResolver;
 import org.xml.sax.InputSource;
 import org.xml.sax.SAXException;
+import org.xml.sax.XMLReader;
 
 
 /**
@@ -35,34 +39,47 @@
  */
 public final class SAXHelper {
     private static POILogger logger = POILogFactory.getLogger(SAXHelper.class);
-    
-    // remove this constant once on Java 6 and stax-api.jar was removed (which is missing this constant):
-    private static final String FEATURE_SECURE_PROCESSING = "http://javax.xml.XMLConstants/feature/secure-processing";
-            
+
+    private SAXHelper() {}
+
     /**
-     * Creates a new SAX Reader, with sensible defaults
+     * Creates a new SAX XMLReader, with sensible defaults
      */
-    public static SAXReader getSAXReader() {
-        SAXReader xmlReader = new SAXReader();
-        xmlReader.setValidation(false);
-        xmlReader.setEntityResolver(new EntityResolver() {
-            public InputSource resolveEntity(String publicId, String systemId)
-                    throws SAXException, IOException {
-                return new InputSource(new StringReader(""));
-            }
-        });
+    public static synchronized XMLReader newXMLReader() throws SAXException, ParserConfigurationException {
+        XMLReader xmlReader = saxFactory.newSAXParser().getXMLReader();
+        xmlReader.setEntityResolver(IGNORING_ENTITY_RESOLVER);
         trySetSAXFeature(xmlReader, FEATURE_SECURE_PROCESSING, true);
         trySetXercesSecurityManager(xmlReader);
         return xmlReader;
     }
-    private static void trySetSAXFeature(SAXReader xmlReader, String feature, boolean enabled) {
+    
+    static final EntityResolver IGNORING_ENTITY_RESOLVER = new EntityResolver() {
+        // not in Java 5: @Override
+        public InputSource resolveEntity(String publicId, String systemId)
+                throws SAXException, IOException {
+            return new InputSource(new StringReader(""));
+        }
+    };
+    
+    private static final SAXParserFactory saxFactory;
+    static {
+        saxFactory = SAXParserFactory.newInstance();
+        saxFactory.setValidating(false);
+        saxFactory.setNamespaceAware(true);
+    }
+            
+    // remove this constant once on Java 6 and stax-api.jar was removed (which is missing this constant):
+    static final String FEATURE_SECURE_PROCESSING = "http://javax.xml.XMLConstants/feature/secure-processing";
+            
+    private static void trySetSAXFeature(XMLReader xmlReader, String feature, boolean enabled) {
         try {
             xmlReader.setFeature(feature, enabled);
         } catch (Exception e) {
             logger.log(POILogger.INFO, "SAX Feature unsupported", feature, e);
         }
     }
-    private static void trySetXercesSecurityManager(SAXReader xmlReader) {
+    
+    private static void trySetXercesSecurityManager(XMLReader xmlReader) {
         // Try built-in JVM one first, standalone if not
         for (String securityManagerClassName : new String[] {
                 "com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.util.SecurityManager",
@@ -82,6 +99,21 @@
     }
 
     /**
+     * Creates a new DOM4J SAXReader, with sensible defaults
+     */
+    public static SAXReader getSAXReader() throws DocumentException {
+        try {
+            SAXReader reader = new SAXReader(newXMLReader(), false);
+            reader.setEntityResolver(IGNORING_ENTITY_RESOLVER);
+            return reader;
+        } catch (SAXException saxe) {
+            throw new DocumentException(saxe);
+        } catch (ParserConfigurationException pce) {
+            throw new DocumentException(pce);
+        }
+    }
+    
+    /**
      * Parses the given stream via the default (sensible)
      * SAX Reader
      * @param inp Stream to read the XML data from
diff --git a/src/ooxml/java/org/apache/poi/xssf/eventusermodel/ReadOnlySharedStringsTable.java b/src/ooxml/java/org/apache/poi/xssf/eventusermodel/ReadOnlySharedStringsTable.java
index 8a4b139..97bfe47 100644
--- a/src/ooxml/java/org/apache/poi/xssf/eventusermodel/ReadOnlySharedStringsTable.java
+++ b/src/ooxml/java/org/apache/poi/xssf/eventusermodel/ReadOnlySharedStringsTable.java
@@ -22,12 +22,11 @@
 import java.util.List;
 
 import javax.xml.parsers.ParserConfigurationException;
-import javax.xml.parsers.SAXParser;
-import javax.xml.parsers.SAXParserFactory;
 
 import org.apache.poi.openxml4j.opc.OPCPackage;
 import org.apache.poi.openxml4j.opc.PackagePart;
 import org.apache.poi.openxml4j.opc.PackageRelationship;
+import org.apache.poi.util.SAXHelper;
 import org.apache.poi.xssf.usermodel.XSSFRelation;
 import org.openxmlformats.schemas.spreadsheetml.x2006.main.CTRst;
 import org.xml.sax.Attributes;
@@ -135,10 +134,8 @@
      */
     public void readFrom(InputStream is) throws IOException, SAXException {
         InputSource sheetSource = new InputSource(is);
-        SAXParserFactory saxFactory = SAXParserFactory.newInstance();
         try {
-           SAXParser saxParser = saxFactory.newSAXParser();
-           XMLReader sheetParser = saxParser.getXMLReader();
+           XMLReader sheetParser = SAXHelper.newXMLReader();
            sheetParser.setContentHandler(this);
            sheetParser.parse(sheetSource);
         } catch(ParserConfigurationException e) {
diff --git a/src/ooxml/java/org/apache/poi/xssf/extractor/XSSFEventBasedExcelExtractor.java b/src/ooxml/java/org/apache/poi/xssf/extractor/XSSFEventBasedExcelExtractor.java
index a313271..5771964 100644
--- a/src/ooxml/java/org/apache/poi/xssf/extractor/XSSFEventBasedExcelExtractor.java
+++ b/src/ooxml/java/org/apache/poi/xssf/extractor/XSSFEventBasedExcelExtractor.java
@@ -22,8 +22,6 @@
 import java.util.Locale;
 
 import javax.xml.parsers.ParserConfigurationException;
-import javax.xml.parsers.SAXParser;
-import javax.xml.parsers.SAXParserFactory;
 
 import org.apache.poi.POIXMLProperties;
 import org.apache.poi.POIXMLTextExtractor;
@@ -33,6 +31,7 @@
 import org.apache.poi.openxml4j.exceptions.OpenXML4JException;
 import org.apache.poi.openxml4j.opc.OPCPackage;
 import org.apache.poi.ss.usermodel.DataFormatter;
+import org.apache.poi.util.SAXHelper;
 import org.apache.poi.xssf.eventusermodel.ReadOnlySharedStringsTable;
 import org.apache.poi.xssf.eventusermodel.XSSFReader;
 import org.apache.poi.xssf.eventusermodel.XSSFSheetXMLHandler;
@@ -154,10 +153,8 @@
        }
       
        InputSource sheetSource = new InputSource(sheetInputStream);
-       SAXParserFactory saxFactory = SAXParserFactory.newInstance();
        try {
-          SAXParser saxParser = saxFactory.newSAXParser();
-          XMLReader sheetParser = saxParser.getXMLReader();
+          XMLReader sheetParser = SAXHelper.newXMLReader();
           ContentHandler handler = new XSSFSheetXMLHandler(
                 styles, strings, sheetContentsExtractor, formatter, formulasNotResults);
           sheetParser.setContentHandler(handler);
diff --git a/src/ooxml/java/org/apache/poi/xssf/extractor/XSSFExportToXml.java b/src/ooxml/java/org/apache/poi/xssf/extractor/XSSFExportToXml.java
index aa68c26..cd0307f 100644
--- a/src/ooxml/java/org/apache/poi/xssf/extractor/XSSFExportToXml.java
+++ b/src/ooxml/java/org/apache/poi/xssf/extractor/XSSFExportToXml.java
@@ -26,8 +26,6 @@
 import java.util.Map;
 import java.util.Vector;
 
-import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder;
-import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory;
 import javax.xml.parsers.ParserConfigurationException;
 import javax.xml.transform.OutputKeys;
 import javax.xml.transform.Source;
@@ -41,6 +39,7 @@
 import javax.xml.validation.Validator;
 
 import org.apache.poi.openxml4j.exceptions.InvalidFormatException;
+import org.apache.poi.util.DocumentHelper;
 import org.apache.poi.xssf.usermodel.XSSFCell;
 import org.apache.poi.xssf.usermodel.XSSFMap;
 import org.apache.poi.xssf.usermodel.XSSFRow;
@@ -101,15 +100,6 @@
         exportToXML(os, "UTF-8", validate);
     }
 
-    private Document getEmptyDocument() throws ParserConfigurationException{
-
-        DocumentBuilderFactory dbfac = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
-        DocumentBuilder docBuilder = dbfac.newDocumentBuilder();
-        Document doc = docBuilder.newDocument();
-
-        return doc;
-    }
-
     /**
      * Exports the data in an XML stream
      *
@@ -127,7 +117,7 @@
 
         String rootElement = map.getCtMap().getRootElement();
 
-        Document doc = getEmptyDocument();
+        Document doc = DocumentHelper.createDocument();
 
         Element root = null;
 
diff --git a/src/ooxml/java/org/apache/poi/xssf/extractor/XSSFImportFromXML.java b/src/ooxml/java/org/apache/poi/xssf/extractor/XSSFImportFromXML.java
index e87a033..498f4df 100644
--- a/src/ooxml/java/org/apache/poi/xssf/extractor/XSSFImportFromXML.java
+++ b/src/ooxml/java/org/apache/poi/xssf/extractor/XSSFImportFromXML.java
@@ -24,13 +24,13 @@
 
 import javax.xml.namespace.NamespaceContext;
 import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder;
-import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory;
 import javax.xml.parsers.ParserConfigurationException;
 import javax.xml.xpath.XPath;
 import javax.xml.xpath.XPathConstants;
 import javax.xml.xpath.XPathExpressionException;
 import javax.xml.xpath.XPathFactory;
 
+import org.apache.poi.util.DocumentHelper;
 import org.apache.poi.util.POILogFactory;
 import org.apache.poi.util.POILogger;
 import org.apache.poi.xssf.usermodel.XSSFTable;
@@ -75,11 +75,9 @@
      * @throws ParserConfigurationException if there are problems with XML parser configuration
      * @throws IOException  if there are problems reading the input string
      */
-    public void importFromXML(String xmlInputString) throws SAXException, XPathExpressionException, ParserConfigurationException, IOException {
+    public void importFromXML(String xmlInputString) throws SAXException, XPathExpressionException, IOException {
 
-        DocumentBuilderFactory factory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
-        factory.setNamespaceAware(true);
-        DocumentBuilder builder = factory.newDocumentBuilder();
+        DocumentBuilder builder = DocumentHelper.newDocumentBuilder();
 
         Document doc = builder.parse(new InputSource(new StringReader(xmlInputString.trim())));