Frustrated by the difficulty in doing certain tasks with the DOM and SAX models, Jason Hunter and Brett McLaughlin created the JDOM package. JDOM is a Java technology-based, open source project that attempts to follow the 80/20 rule: Deliver what 80% of users need with 20% of the functions in DOM and SAX. JDOM works with SAX and DOM parsers, so it's implemented as a relatively small set of Java classes.

The main feature of JDOM is that it greatly reduces the amount of code you have to write. Although this introductory tutorial doesn't discuss programming topics in depth, JDOM applications are typically one-third as long as DOM applications, and about half as long as SAX applications. (DOM purists, of course, suggest that learning and using the DOM is good discipline that will pay off in the long run.) JDOM doesn't do everything, but for most of the parsing you want to do, it's probably just the thing.