| XML Parser for Java 4.3.0 Release |

Welcome to the future! Xerces2 is the next generation of high performance, fully compliant XML parsers in the Apache Xerces family. This new version of Xerces introduces the Xerces Native Interface (XNI), a complete framework for building parser components and configurations that is extremely modular and easy to program.

The Apache Xerces2 parser is the reference implementation of XNI but other parser components, configurations, and parsers can be written using the Xerces Native Interface. For complete design and implementation documents, refer to the XNI Manual.

Xerces2 is a fully conforming XML Schema processor. For more information, refer to the XML Schema page.

Xerces2 also provides an experimental implementation of the Document Object Model Level 3 Core and Load/Save Proposed Recommendations and provides a partial implementation of the XML Inclusions (XInclude) W3C Working Draft in Last Call. It also provides support for OASIS XML Catalogs.

Xerces2 is now able to parse documents written according to the XML 1.1 Recommendation, except that it does not yet provide an option to enable normalization checking as described in section 2.13 of this specification. It also handles namespaces according to the XML Namespaces 1.1 Recommendation, and will correctly serialize XML 1.1 documents if the DOM level 3 load/save API's are in use.

| Features of This Release |

The XML Parser for Java 4.3.0 supports the following standards and APIs:

- eXtensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 Third Edition Recommendation
- Namespaces in XML Recommendation
- eXtensible Markup Language (XML) 1.1 First Edition Recommendation
- Namespaces in XML 1.1 Recommendation
- Document Object Model (DOM) Level 2 Core, Events, and Traversal and Range Recommendations
- Simple API for XML (SAX) 2.0.1 Core, and Extensions
- Java APIs for XML Processing (JAXP) 1.2
- XML Schema 1.0 Structures and Datatypes Recommendations

| Backwards compatibility |

| According to the DOM Level 3 specification and DOM Level 2 errata the createElementNS and createAttributeNS methods convert empty string namespaceURI to null. Please, let us know if this change affects your application.

| Changes from Previous Release |

The XML Parser for Java 4.3.0 contains several bug fixes:

- This release fixes a documentation bug in the XML Schema API. In particular in the `XSModel` interface the order of the parameters in `getTypeDefinition, getNotationDeclaration, getModelGroupDefinition, getElementDeclaration, getAttributeDeclaration, getAttributeGroupM` methods have been changes from `(String namespace, String name) to (String name, String namespace)`.
- This release requires JDK 1.2 or later to run and also requires JDK 1.2 or later to build the source code

For a more complete list of changes, refer to the Release Information page.

| Changes from Xerces 1.x |

| Xerces2 is a nearly complete rewrite of the Xerces 1.x codebase in order to make the code cleaner, more modular, and easier to maintain. It includes a completely redesigned and rewritten XML Schema validation engine. Applications using only the standard interfaces such as JAXP, DOM, and SAX should not see any differences.

| License Information |

| The Xerces-J 4.3.0 release is available in source code and precompiled binary (JAR files) form. Both Xerces-J packages are made available under the Apache Software License.