(Simple API for XML) A programming interface (API) for accessing the contents of an XML document. SAX does not provide a random access lookup to the document's contents. It scans the document sequentially and presents each item to the application only one time. If the application does not save the data, it is no longer available. In contrast, the Document Object Model (DOM) converts the document's contents into a node tree that can be traversed back and forth via the programming interface (API). Both SAX and DOM are popular APIs for manipulating XML documents. See DOM and SOX.