How do I remove namespaces from xml, using java dom?

Use the Regex function. This will solve this issue:

public static String removeXmlStringNamespaceAndPreamble(String xmlString) {
  return xmlString.replaceAll("(<\\?[^<]*\\?>)?", ""). /* remove preamble */
  replaceAll("xmlns.*?(\"|\').*?(\"|\')", "") /* remove xmlns declaration */
  .replaceAll("(<)(\\w+:)(.*?>)", "$1$3") /* remove opening tag prefix */
  .replaceAll("(</)(\\w+:)(.*?>)", "$1$3"); /* remove closing tags prefix */
}

For Element and Attribute nodes:

Node node = ...;
String name = node.getLocalName();

will give you the local part of the node's name.

See Node.getLocalName()

You can pre-process XML to remove all namespaces, if you absolutely must do so. I'd recommend against it, as removing namespaces from an XML document is in essence comparable to removing namespaces from a programming framework or library - you risk name clashes and lose the ability to differentiate between once-distinct elements. However, it's your funeral. ;-)

This XSLT transformation removes all namespaces from any XML document.

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
  <xsl:template match="node()">
    <xsl:copy>
      <xsl:apply-templates select="node()|@*" />
    </xsl:copy>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="*">
    <xsl:element name="{local-name()}">
      <xsl:apply-templates select="node()|@*" />
    </xsl:element>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="@*">
    <xsl:attribute name="{local-name()}">
      <xsl:apply-templates select="node()|@*" />
    </xsl:attribute>
  </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

Apply it to your XML document. Java examples for doing such a thing should be plenty, even on this site. The resulting document will be exactly of the same structure and layout, just without namespaces.

Rather than

dbFactory_.setNamespaceAware(true);

Use

dbFactory_.setNamespaceAware(false);

Although I agree with Tomalak: in general, namespaces are more helpful than harmful. Why don't you want to use them?

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Edit: this answer doesn't answer the OP's question, which was how to get rid of namespace prefixes. RD01 provided the correct answer to that.