Saxon 9

(Excerpt from "XSLT 2.0 & XPath 2.0" by Frank Bongers)

The XSLT processor Saxon, designed by Michael Kay, editor of the XSLT 2.0 specification, is no longer the only processor capable of handling XSLT 2.0. However, it still dominates the market for command-line processors and processors that can be integrated into server-side systems.

With the introduction of Saxon 8.x, development split into two processor branches: Saxon-B (“Basic”), which remains available as open source, and the commercially distributed Saxon-SA (“Schema Aware”). The current release at the time the book went to press was Saxon 9.0 (subsequently Saxon 9.5.1.6, as of July 2014).

Both processor variants can process XSLT 1.0 stylesheets. Their capabilities with regard to XSLT 2.0, XPath 2.0 and XQuery are also the same. However, only the SA version can process XML Schema 1.0 schemas and take them into account when executing XSLT 2.0 stylesheets or XQuery programs.

Saxon-B is available from: http://saxon.sourceforge.net/ (open source)
Saxon-SA is available from: www.saxonica.com (commercial)

The following discussion applies to both versions of the Saxon processor.

Features of the Saxon Processor

The Saxon software package includes a range of tools for processing XML documents, of which the XSLT processor is our primary focus here. It now fully implements the specifications for XSLT 2.0, XPath 2.0, XQuery 1.0 and the other related specifications. Saxon also continues to provide full support for XSLT 1.0 and XPath 1.0.

Extension Functions and Extension Elements

In addition, both variants of Saxon 9 offer numerous extensions for XSLT processing, as did their predecessors. Some are processor-specific extensions, while others are the widely used EXSLT extensions. These include the EXSLT collections “Common”, “Math”, “Sets”, “DatesAndTimes” and “Functions”.

Although the functionality available in XSLT 2.0 makes many of these extensions essentially obsolete, their continued support allows older stylesheets that rely on them to remain in use without problems.

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