What is the difference between DOM and SAX parser in Java?

Question

I have an xml file and I need to parse that file using sax parser an store that parsing data to mysql database.

Answer 1

1) DOM parser loads whole XML document in memory while SAX only loads a small part of the XML file in memory.

2) DOM parser is faster than SAX because it access whole XML document in memory.

3) SAX parser in Java is better suitable for large XML file than DOM Parser because it doesn't require much memory.

4) DOM parser works on Document Object Model while SAX is an event based XML parser.

SAX Stands for Simple API for XML Parsing. This is an event based XML Parsing and it parse XML file step by step so much suitable for large XML Files. SAX XML Parser fires an event when it encountered opening tag, element or attribute, and the parsing works accordingly. It’s recommended to use SAX XML parser for parsing large XML files in Java because it doesn't require to load whole XML file in Java and it can read a big XML file in small parts. Java provides support for SAX parser and you can parse any XML file in Java using SAX Parser, I have covered an example of reading XML file using SAX Parser here. One disadvantage of using SAX Parser in java is that reading XML file in Java using SAX Parser requires more code in comparison of DOM Parser.

Answer 2

DOM parser loads the whole XML into memory to create a tree based DOM model which helps it quickly locate nodes and make a change in the structure of XML while SAX parser is an event based parser and doesn't load the whole XML into memory. Due to this reason DOM is faster than SAX but require more memory and not suitable to parse large XML files.