# Introduction

The Saxon distribution includes a set of extension elements providing access to SQL databases. These are not intended as being necessarily a production-quality piece of software (there are many limitations in the design), but more as an illustration of how extension elements can be used to enhance the capability of the processor.

To use the SQL extension elements in a stylesheet, you need to define a namespace prefix (for example "sql") in the extension-element-prefixes attribute of the xsl:stylesheet element, and to map this prefix to namespace URI that ends in "/net.sf.saxon.sql.SQLElementFactory".

This extension defines five new stylesheet elements: `sql:connect`, `sql:query`, `sql:insert`, `sql:column`, and `sql:close`, described in the following sections.

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