# Introduction

Release 8.1.1 is the latest installment of Saxonica's progressive implementation of the XPath 2.0, XSLT 2.0, and XQuery 1.0 specifications. This release implements the schema-aware features of these languages, and also includes a free-standing schema processor conforming to XML Schema 1.0

Saxon 8.1 has been developed in collaboration with Stylus Studio. Release 6 of Stylus Studio takes advantage of new features introduced in this Saxon release to support stylesheet and query debugging. Saxonica is pleased to recommend Stylus Studio as a leading XML, XSLT, and XQuery development environment.

Saxon 8.1 provides new functionality, improved performance, and better diagnostics. The licensing model for Saxon-SA is also more flexible, allowing a range of different feature combinations to be offered at different price levels.

The product is aligned with the working drafts published up to July 2004, though a few features are not yet implemented, and some changes have been made to implement decisions made by the working groups since those drafts were published.

Saxon 8.1 is available in two versions. Saxon-B 8.1 is a non-schema-aware processor, and is available as an open-source product, free of charge, from SourceForge. It is designed to conform to the basic conformance level of XSLT 2.0, and the equivalent level of functionality in XQuery 1.0. Saxon-SA 8.1 is the schema-aware version of the package, and is available as a commercially supported product from Saxonica Limited. Licensing options are available to provide XSLT only, XQuery only, or schema validation only, as well as a full license that gives access to all functionality.

Saxon 8.1.1 is a maintenance release that corrects several bugs found in 8.1.

This documentation covers both products, with differences noted where applicable.

Please note: this documentation is provided on the Saxonica web site and also in the download file. On occasions the online version may be more up-to-date. The download file also includes full API documentation,: see the doc/api directory.

JavaDoc API specifications (for the current release only) are also available.

A full change log is provided in changes.html

Saxon 8.0 has been used for production applications by many users. The code is proving stable and reliable. However, you need to be aware that the specifications are still subject to change, and that new Saxon releases will track the changing specifications with no concessions to backward compatibility.

If you are looking for complete stability, the preferred version for production use remains Saxon 6.5.3, which implements XSLT 1.0 and XPath 1.0.

Saxon 8.1 requires Java JDK 1.4. It is believed to run without problems on JDK 1.5, though it is not possible to compile the source under JDK 1.5 because of incompatibilities in the DOM interfaces.

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