SAX

What is SAX?

  SAX (Simple API for XML) like DOM (Document Object Model) gives access to the information stored in XML documents using any programming language (and a parser for that language). However, both of them take very different approaches to giving you access to your information: DOM creates a tree of nodes (based on the structure and information in your XML document) and you can access your information by interacting with this tree of nodes. DOM gives you access to the information stored in your XML document as a hierarchical object model. The textual information in your XML document gets turned into a bunch of tree nodes. With SAX, the parser tells the application what is in the document by notifying the application of a stream of parsing events. Application then processes those events to act on data. SAX is very useful when the document is large.

SAX History:

  SAX 1.0 (the Simple API for XML) was released on May 11, 1998. SAX is a common, event-based API for parsing XML documents, developed as a collaborative project of the members of the XML-DEV discussion under the leadership of David Megginson. Relative to the preliminary draft version of SAX released in January 1998, SAX Version 1.0 represents a major reimplementation, adding some important features such as the ability to read documents from byte or character streams. "SAX fills the same role for XML that the JDBC fills for SQL: with SAX, a Java application can work with any XML parser, as long as the parser has a SAX 1.0 driver available. . . The first release of SAX is in Java, but versions in other programming languages may follow. SAX is free for both commercial and non-commercial use."