SAX Parsing
SAX (Simple API for XML) parsing is an event-driven XML parsing technique that processes XML documents sequentially, generating events (like start element, end element, text) as it reads through the document. Unlike DOM parsing, it does not build an in-memory tree structure, making it memory-efficient for large XML files. It is commonly implemented in programming languages through SAX parsers, such as SAX2 in Java or xml.sax in Python.
Developers should use SAX parsing when working with large XML documents where memory efficiency is critical, such as processing log files, streaming data feeds, or parsing multi-gigabyte XML datasets. It is ideal for read-only operations where you need to extract specific data without modifying the XML structure, as it avoids the overhead of loading the entire document into memory. SAX is also useful in environments with limited resources, like embedded systems or mobile applications.