Release 8.5.1 is the latest installment of Saxonica's progressive implementation of the XPath 2.0, XSLT 2.0, and XQuery 1.0 specifications. Saxon 8.5 is aligned with the W3C working drafts published on 4 April 2005.
Saxon 8.5.1 fixes all known bugs in Saxon 8.5, and fills in some of the last remaining gaps in conformance with the W3C specifications. It provides some enhancements in the handling of multiple modules in XQuery, and improves the throughput of document loading when many small documents are processed.
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.
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, and that new Saxon releases will track the changing specifications with few concessions to backward compatibility.
If you are looking for complete stability, the preferred version for production use remains Saxon 6.5.4, which implements XSLT 1.0 and XPath 1.0.
Saxon 8.x requires Java JDK 1.4 or later. If you have a choice, it is best to use JDK 1.5, since that includes the latest version of JAXP as standard, giving less scope for configuration problems. (Note that JDK 1.5 is part of J2SE 5.0, occasionally referred to as JDK 5.0)