What is Saxon?

The Saxon package is a collection of tools for processing XML documents. The main components are:

So you can use Saxon to process XML by writing XSLT stylesheets, by writing XQuery queries, by writing Java applications, or by combinations of the approaches.

Saxon implements the XSLT 1.0 recommendation, including XPath 1.0, in its entirety. Saxon 8.x also implements nearly all the features defined in the XSLT 2.0, XPath 2.0, and XQuery 1.0 working drafts. New features beyond XSLT 1.0 include:

The small number of features not yet supported are listed on the Conformance page.

In addition, Saxon provides an extensive library of extension elements and extension functions, all implemented in conformance with the XSLT Recommendation to ensure that portable stylesheets can be written. These include the EXSLT extension libraries common, sets, math, and dates-and-times. Many of these extensions were pioneered in Saxon and have since become available in other products.

These extension functions are in general accessible from XQuery as well as XSLT, except where they depend on stylesheet information.

Saxon also provides an API allowing a Java application to execute XPath expressions and process the results. This API conforms to (and extends) the JAXP 1.3 API. A separate API is available for XQuery 1.0, reflecting differences in the way the context is set up. This is a Saxon-specific API, since there are no standards in this area yet.

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