[ANN] Saxon 8.7 is available on Java and .NET

[Michael Kay]

Saxon 8.7 is now available. Both Saxon-B and Saxon-SA (the schema-aware
product) are being made available simultaneously on the Java and .NET
platforms.

Delivering Saxon on .NET is an important development. The new release goes
considerably further than previous Saxon.NET releases: it integrates much
more closely with other .NET services such as the System.Xml parser, and it
provides a new API designed to fit in with the stylistic conventions of the
.NET framework. Also, because this release is delivered by Saxonica, it has
been through all the same tests as the Java product, and the documentation
is fully integrated.

I have to express my appreciation to Pieter Siegers Kort, M. David Peterson
and others who pioneered the approach that has been used to create this
product; and also to Jeroen Frijters who produced the IKVMC cross-compiler
on which the technology depends. The Saxon code is still written in 100%
Java, except for the new API front-end which is in C#. The Java code is
compiled as normal, and the byte-code is then translated into native MSIL
for the .NET platform using the IKVMC compiler. Run-time library services
are obtained partly from the GNU ClassPath library, and partly from the .NET
framework classes.

I'm quite pleased with the new API, which is documented at
http://www.saxonica.com/documentation/dotnetdoc/index.html (start with the
Processor class). I think it's a lot cleaner than either the JAXP or the
System.Xml.Xsl APIs, and adopts a uniform approach to compiling and running
XSLT, XQuery, XPath, and XML Schema. I may well port it back to the Java
product in due course. 


Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/