XML API Internals

XML gurus define 5 styles of XML APIs:

• event-based API or streaming API:
  • push model: SAX, Xerces Native Interface (XNI);
  • pull model: XPP3, StAX;
• tree-based API: DOM, JDOM, dom4j;
• data-binding API;
• query API: XSLT, XPath;

More details could be found here.

Analysis illustrating how XML APIs relate to each other could be found here.

Estimated timeline of Java XML APIs could be found here.