# About Saxon

Release 8.6 represents an important milestone in Saxonica's progressive implementation of the XPath 2.0, XSLT 2.0, and XQuery 1.0 specifications. Saxon 8.6 is aligned with the W3C Candidate Recommendation published on 3 November 2005. It is a complete and conformant implementation, providing all the mandatory features of those specifications and nearly all the optional features.

Version 8.6.1 is a maintenance release that corrects a number of errors.

Saxon is available in two versions. Saxon-B 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 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.

This documentation covers both products, with differences noted where applicable. For a summary of the differences, see Product Packages.

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.

Saxon 8.x 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. Now that the specifications have reached Candidate Recommendation status, further changes are unlikely, but there may still be minor corrections and clarifications issued, and Saxon will implement any such changes.

If you are looking for an XSLT 1.0 or XPath 1.0 processor, Saxon 6.5.4 remains available.

Saxon 8.x requires Java JDK 1.4 or later. If you have a choice, it is best to use JDK 1.5 (also known as JDK 5.0), since that includes the latest version of JAXP as standard, giving less scope for configuration problems.

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