Create a blank DOM node, use it as a input source to transform doesn't throw any exception. But if transform on a empty result, transform doesn't throw an TransformerException.
  
       String xslURI = filenameToURL(XML_DIR + "DOMTest.xsl");

        // Startup a factory, create some nodes/DOMs
        TransformerFactory factory = TransformerFactory.newInstance();
        DocumentBuilderFactory dfactory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
        dfactory.setNamespaceAware(true);
        DocumentBuilder docBuilder = dfactory.newDocumentBuilder();
        Node xslNode = docBuilder.parse(new InputSource(xslURI));
        // Try to get templates, transformerXSL from node
        DOMSource xslDOM = new DOMSource(xslNode);
        Transformer transformerXSL = factory.newTransformer(xslDOM);

        // A blank DOM as source doc of the transform - should throw exception
        // (new functionality)
        DOMSource blankSource = new DOMSource();
        DOMResult emptyNodeDOM = new DOMResult(docBuilder.newDocument());
        // throws TransformerException but it doesn't why?
        transformerXSL.transform(blankSource, emptyNodeDOM);