When to Use SAX
It is helpful to understand the SAX event model when you want to convert existing data to XML. As you'll see in Generating XML from an Arbitrary Data Structure (page 264), the key to the conversion process is to modify an existing application to deliver SAX events as it reads the data.
SAX is fast and efficient, but its event model makes it most useful for such state-independent filtering. For example, a SAX parser calls one method in your application when an element tag is encountered and calls a different method when text is found. If the processing you're doing is state-independent (meaning that it does not depend on the elements that have come before), then SAX works fine.
On the other hand, for state-dependent processing, ...
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