The StAX specification defines a number of use cases for the API:
Unmarshalling an XML document
Marshalling an XML document
Parallel document processing
Wireless communication
Parsing simple predictable structures
Parsing graph representations with forward references
Parsing WSDL
Virtual data sources
Viewing as XML data stored in databases
Viewing data in Java objects created by XML data binding
Navigating a DOM tree as a stream of events
Parsing specific XML vocabularies
Pipelined XML processing
A complete discussion of all these use cases is beyond the scope of this chapter. Please refer to the StAX specification for further information.