Simple API for XML

SAX (Simple API for XML) is an event-driven online algorithm for parsing XML documents, with an API developed by the XML-DEV mailing list. SAX provides a mechanism for reading data from an XML document that is an alternative to that provided by the Document Object Model (DOM). Where the DOM operates on the document as a whole, i.e. building the full AST of an XML document for convenience of the user, SAX parsers operate on each piece of the XML document sequentially, issuing parsing events while making a single pass through the input stream. SAX (Simple API for XML) is an event-driven online algorithm for parsing XML documents, with an API developed by the XML-DEV mailing list. SAX provides a mechanism for reading data from an XML document that is an alternative to that provided by the Document Object Model (DOM). Where the DOM operates on the document as a whole, i.e. building the full AST of an XML document for convenience of the user, SAX parsers operate on each piece of the XML document sequentially, issuing parsing events while making a single pass through the input stream. Unlike DOM, there is no formal specification for SAX. The Java implementation of SAX is considered to be normative. SAX processes documents state-independently, in contrast to DOM which is used for state-dependent processing of XML documents.