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SAX (Simple API for XML) is an event-driven online algorithm for lexing and parsing XML documents, with an API developed by the XML-DEV mailing list.[1] 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—building the full abstract syntax tree 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.
Short for Simple API for XML, an event-based API that, as an alternative to DOM, allows someone to access the contents of an XML document. SAX was originally a Java-only API. The current version supports several programming language environments other than Java. SAX was developed by the members of the XML-DEV mailing list.