To determine which programming interface is right for you, you need to understand the design points of all of the interfaces, and you need to understand what your application needs to do with the XML documents you're going to process. Consider these questions to help you find the right approach.

• Will your application be written in Java? JAXP works with DOM, SAX, and JDOM; if you're writing your code in Java, you should use JAXP to isolate your code from the implementation details of various parsers.
• How will your application be deployed? If your application is going to be deployed as a Java applet, and you want to minimize the amount of downloaded code, keep in mind that SAX parsers are smaller than DOM parsers. Also be aware that using JDOM requires a small amount of code in addition to the SAX or DOM parser.
• Once you parse the XML document, will you need to access that data many times? If you need to go back to the parsed version of the XML file, DOM is probably the right choice. When a SAX event is fired, it's up to you (the developer) to save it somehow if you need it later. If you need to access an event you didn't save, you have to parse the file again. DOM saves all of the data automatically.
• Do you need just a few things from the XML source? If you only need a few things out of the XML source, SAX is probably the right choice. SAX doesn't create objects for everything in the source document; you can decide what's important. With SAX, you can look at each event to see if it's relevant to your needs, then process it appropriately. Even better, once you've found what you're looking for, your code can throw an exception to stop the SAX parser altogether.
• Are you working on a machine with very little memory? If so, SAX is your best choice, despite all the other factors that you might consider.

Be aware that XML APIs exist for other languages; the Perl and Python communities in particular have very good XML tools.