Simple API for XML

SAX is a serial access parser API for XML and its name is acronymically derived from "Simple API for XML". A SAX Parser handles XML information as a stream and is unidirectional, i.e. it cannot renegotiate a node without first having to establish a new handle to the document and reparse. With that proviso in mind, however, the SAX parser, since it works in stream mode, is unquestionably faster than its sibling the DOM[?] parser.

The SAX parser is implemented as an event-driven[?] model in which the programmer provides callback methods which are invoked by the parser as part of its traversal of the XML document.

SAX was developed collaboratively on the xml-dev mailing list, with no formal committee structure, but was quickly implemented by major companies working with XML. The original lead developer and maintainer was David Megginson[?]. SAX is now maintained by David Brownell[?].

See also: XML, DOM (XML API)[?]