The Java API for XML Processing (JAXP) Optional Package enables basic functionality for reading and manipulating XML documents through pure Java APIs. The API provides a standard way for any XML-conformant parser and XSLT-conformant processor to be accessed by an application. The reference implementation uses Crimson, which was derived from the Java Project X parser from Sun, as its default XML parser and Xalan as its default XSLT engine. However, the pluggable architecture of JAXP allows any XML conformant implementations to be used.
This release is addressed to Java developers who want access to a reference implementation of JAXP 1.1. The library includes both validating and non-validating parsers and supports an optional in-memory object model tree for manipulating and writing XML structured data. However, the API for writing XML data is non-standard because no standard API currently exists. Also included is an XSLT implementation using the current version of Xalan 2 as of November 16, 2000 minus the BSF (Beans Scripting Framework) extension. Using this software, application and tool developers can build fully-functional XML-enabled Java applications for e-commerce, application integration, and web publishing.
JAXP 1.1 adds additional functionality over the previous version 1.0. In particular, version 1.1 includes an XSLT framework based on the TRaX (Transformations for XML) API plus some minor updates to the parsing API to support DOM Level 2 and SAX version 2.0.
This release aims to be conformant to the following specifications:
The software in the packages javax.xml.parsers and
javax.xml.transform are covered by the JAXP Reference Implementation Pre-release
License. The software under the package hierarchies beginning
with org.w3c.dom are covered by the W3C Software License. All of the
remaining software in this distribution is covered by the Apache Software License.
See the Installation Instructions
for more information.
Documentation
At this time, the documentation for this package is primarily:
Developers should note that this API documentation uses
the Java 2 Software Development Kit (SDK) javadoc features,
so that the summary pages (listing the packages and the contents
of each package) are considerably more useful than in older versions.
Each summary now has an explanation of its significant
features and (as a rule) how to use the package.
Feedback and XML Discussion Forums
Please send feedback on this software to the xml-feedback@java.sun.com mailing address. This address is not a mailing list so you cannot subscribe. However, there are two mailing lists hosted by Sun for XML that you can subscribe to. One of these lists is the xml-interest@java.sun.com mailing list where general discussions about XML occur. To subscribe go to http://java.sun.com/xml and follow the instructions listed there.
For very technical "Developers Only" discussions, you may also be interested in the XML-Dev list. An archive of that mailing list is available.
The newsgroup comp.text.xml may also be of interest.