Highlights

This page lists some of the most important new features introduced in Saxon 9.2.

• Saxon 9.2 requires JDK 1.5

• Saxon 9.2 comes in three editions: Home, Professional, and Enterprise, replacing the previous split between Basic and Schema-Aware.

  • Home Edition (HE) includes most of what was in Saxon-B, with the exception of Saxon extensions and extensibility features

  • Professional Edition (PE) includes everything that was in Saxon-B, plus some additional features previously only available in Saxon-SA, such as XQuery 1.1 support and higher-order functions

  • Enteprise Edition (EE) is the successor to Saxon-SA, and includes all the capability of Saxon-SA plus new features introduced in Saxon 9.2.

• Configuration information can now be specified in an optional configuration file

• A new mechanism for creating "integrated extension functions" is defined, removing the reliance on Java reflection and the dependency on ad-hoc rules for conversions between XPath types and Java classes

• Separate compilation of query modules in now possible (Saxon-EE only)

• Support for XQuery Updates is aligned with the Candidate Recommendation

• Selected features from the draft XQuery 1.1 Recommendation are implemented, notably Higher Order Functions

• A number of Saxon extension functions have been reimplemented to use higher order functions, leading to a slight change in interface

• More features from XML Schema 1.1 have been implemented, including "open content", and the ability for an element to belong to multiple substitution groups.

• More capabilities are available for running transformations in streaming mode, in particular, it is now possible to traverse a streamed document using recursive template rules provided that the template rules are sufficiently simple.