JavaTM API for XML Processing
README

Version: 1.1 (Final)

The Java API for XML Processing (JAXP) enables applications to parse and transform XML documents using an API that is independent of a particular XML processor implementation. The reference implementation uses Crimson, which was derived from the Java Project X parser from Sun, as its default XML parser and Xalan as its default XSLT engine. However, the pluggable architecture of JAXP allows any XML conformant implementations to be used.

This release is addressed to Java developers who want access to a reference implementation of JAXP 1.1. The library includes both validating and non-validating parsers and supports an optional in-memory object model tree for manipulating and writing XML structured data. However, the API for writing XML data is non-standard because no standard API currently exists. Also included is an XSLT implementation using a recent version of Xalan 2 as of January 2001, minus the BSF (Beans Scripting Framework) extension. Using this software, application and tool developers can build fully-functional XML-enabled Java applications for e-commerce, application integration, and web publishing.

The JAXP 1.1 API adds additional functionality over the previous version 1.0. In particular, version 1.1 includes an XSLT framework based on TrAX (Transformation API for XML) plus some updates to the parsing API to support DOM Level 2 and SAX version 2.0 and an improved pluggable implementation locating scheme.

You may download the current version of this package by following the links from http://java.sun.com/xml.

Conformance

This release aims to be conformant to the following specifications:

Software Licenses

The software in the packages javax.xml.parsers and javax.xml.transform is covered by the JAXP Reference Implementation License. The software under the package hierarchies beginning with org.w3c.dom is covered by the W3C Software License. All of the remaining software in this distribution is covered by the Apache Software License.

Installation Instructions

To use this software, you need any version of the JavaTM 2 Software Development Kit (SDK) or version 1.1.8 of the Java Development Kit (JDK) or above. Java development kits for various platforms can be downloaded from several sites such as one provided by Sun Microsystems at http://java.sun.com/j2se.

See the Installation instructions for more information.

Documentation

At this time, the documentation for this release consists of:

Developers should note that this API documentation uses the Java 2 SDK javadoc features, so that the summary pages (listing the packages and the contents of each package) are considerably more useful than in older versions. Each summary now has an explanation of its significant features and (as a rule) how to use the package.

XML Discussion Forums and Feedback

For better response to general problems with XML or XSLT, please use the following discussion forums.

Sun hosts one discussion list and a one-way announcement list:

To subscribe, go to http://java.sun.com/xml and follow the directions listed there.

Some other useful discussion forums not hosted by Sun are:

Bugs can be reported to Bug Parade under the category JAXP. (This category should be available shortly.) Feedback on this software may be sent to the xml-feedback@java.sun.com mailing address. This address is not a subscribe-able mailing list.


Java is a trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc.