Proclaiming that "There is no compelling reason for a Java API to manipulate XML to be complex, tricky, unintuitive, or a pain in the neck," a group of developers is building JDOM, an alternative API for accessing XML document information.

The JDOM project is building a "complete, Java-based solution for accessing, manipulating, and outputting XML data from Java code."

While a full specification is still in the works, a UML diagram and javadoc are available.

Adapters for various parsers are included. JDOM supports both SAX and the W3C DOM:

"While JDOM is 100% compliant with existing standards such as the Simple API for XML (SAX) and the Document Object Model (DOM), it is not an abstraction layer or enhancement to those APIs. Rather, it seeks to provide a robust, light-weight means of reading and writing XML data without the complex and memory-consumptive options that current API offerings provide."