Re: DOM FAQ

Extremely brief summary (we should probably add mention of SAX to the FAQ,
in the "DOM and other standards" section):

The DOM is the W3C's random-access tree-structured API for viewing the
contents of an XML document. It doesn't address parsing yet.

SAX is an XML parser API, which includes a sequential event-driven API for
viewing the contents of an XML document. It isn't a W3C project; it was
produced by an ad-hoc group on the XML-DEV mailing list.

SAX and DOM don't completely agree on what data should be presented to the
user. Level 2 of each spec come closer to agreeing.

Most parsers these days support both. There are software modules which will
produce SAX stream from DOM trees and vice versa. Which is best for your
program depends on the problem you're trying to solve and how you want to
approach it.

______________________________________
Joe Kesselman  / IBM Research

Received on Wednesday, 2 February 2000 17:06:10 UTC