Question

Here’s the code:

SAXParserFactory mySAXParserFactory = SAXParserFactory.newInstance();
SAXParser mySAXParser = mySAXParserFactory.newSAXParser();

Why use that if you can use something more intuitive like:

SAXParser mySAXParser = new SAXParser();

Answer 1

Because this allows the framework to provide you with different implementations of SAXParser in a transparent way. The implementation used may depend on configuration parameters, framework version etc. Using a factory allows the framework developers e.g. to replace an old, inefficient parser implementation with a different, better one, without breaking any client code.

Note that SAXParser is an abstract class, so you can’t even instantiate it directly.