SAXONICA

Saxon Documentation
Full Contents
About Saxon
Changes in this Release
» | Version 8.7 (2006-02-24)
| Version 8.6.1 (24 November 2005)
| Version 8.6 (3 November 2005)
| Version 8.5.1 (26 August 2005)
| Version 8.5 (2 August 2005)
| Version 8.4 (4 April 2005)
| Version 8.3 (11 February 2005)
| Version 8.2 (21 December 2004)
| Version 8.1.1 (8 October 2004)
| Version 8.1 (24 September 2004)
| Version 8.0 (1 June 2004)
Conditions of Use
Using XSLT 2.0
Using XQuery
Handling Source Documents
XML Schema Processing
The XPath API
Saxon on .NET
Extensibility
Saxon Extensions
Sample Saxon Applications
The Saxon SQL Extension
XSLT Elements
XPath 2.0 Expression Syntax
Function Library
Standards Conformance

# Saxon on .NET platform

Saxon is now released for two platforms: the Java platform (JDK 1.4 or later), and the .NET platform (validated only on .NET version 1.1). The documentation covers both platforms except where otherwise stated.

The basic port to the .NET platform has been achieved by translating the Java bytecode to MSIL instructions using the IKVMC static compiler, which in turn links to the GNU ClassPath for run-time support of the Java class library. I would like to express my appreciation to Pieter Siegers and M. David Peterson who pioneered this approach and demonstrated its feasibility, and of course to Jeroen Frijters and the other developers who created the technology, which has proved very robust.

The code that is ported in this way includes both the schema-aware and basic products. The open-source (basic) product is provided as an assembly `saxon8.dll`, while the schema-aware code is packaged in assembly `saxon8sa.dll`. Note that unlike the Java distribution, the `saxon8sa.dll` does not duplicate or replace the code in `saxon8.dll`, rather it references it as a dependent assembly.

The ported Java code is supplemented by an API library designed for use by .NET applications. Although documented in C# terms, this is of course accessible to any .NET programming language. This is a new API designed to give a coherent approach to handling of XSLT, XQuery, and XPath, and to provide integration with existing .NET capabilities (in particular, the `System.Xml` package where appropriate. The API builds on ideas from JAXP and from `System.Xml.Xsl` and elsewhere, but is in effect a new design.

Command-line interfaces `Transform`, `Query` and `Validate` are available for .NET: the command-line options are largely the same as the Java equivalents. The same command provides access to schema-aware (using the `-sa` option) and non-schema-aware operations (`Validate`, of course, is always schema-aware).

Facilities not currently supported on the .NET platform include the following (this means they are untested, not necessarily that they don't work):

- XSLT stylesheet compilation

- Extension functions written in .NET languages

- User-written XSLT extension instructions

- The SQL extension

- OEM license keys

Saxon on the .NET platform relies on the GNU Classpath library for much of its run-time support, though some of the more critical operations are delegated instead to the .NET Common Language Runtime (CLR). The Microsoft XML parser is generally used in preference to the GNU XML parser, though the GNU parser will be used, for example, if a `SAXSource` is supplied by the application. URI handling (especially URI dereferencing) is generally delegated to the .NET platform. Collations are implemented using the facilities of the .NET `System.Globalization` namespace, except where Java-specific facilities are used such as an explicit collation class or explicit collation rules. Regular expression processing is also delegated to the CLR, because the GNU regex library was found not to support the full JDK regex syntax.

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