Welcome to the home of Xerces Java. Xerces2 provides high performance, fully compliant XML parsers in the Apache Xerces family. This new version of Xerces continues to build upon 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 provides fully conforming XML Schema 1.0 and 1.1 processors. An experimental implementation of the "XML Schema Definition Language (XSD): Component Designators (SCD) Candidate Recommendation (January 2010)" is also provided for evaluation. For more information, refer to the XML Schema page.

Xerces2 also provides a complete implementation of the Document Object Model Level 3 Core and Load/Save W3C Recommendations and provides a complete implementation of the XML Inclusions (XInclude) W3C Recommendation. It also provides support for OASIS XML Catalogs v1.1.

Xerces2 is 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 APIs are in use.

The Xerces2 Java XML Parser 2.12.2 supports the following standards and APIs:

• eXtensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 Fourth Edition Recommendation
• Namespaces in XML 1.0 Second Edition Recommendation
• eXtensible Markup Language (XML) 1.1 Second Edition Recommendation
• Namespaces in XML 1.1 Second Edition Recommendation
• XML Inclusions (XInclude) Version 1.0 Second Edition Recommendation
• Document Object Model (DOM) Level 3 Core, Load and Save, (DOM) Level 2 Core, Events, and Traversal and Range Recommendations
• Element Traversal First Edition Recommendation
• Simple API for XML (SAX) 2.0.2 Core and Extensions
• Java APIs for XML Processing (JAXP) 1.4
• Streaming API For XML (StAX) 1.0 Event API (javax.xml.stream.events)
• XML Schema 1.0 Structures and Datatypes Second Edition Recommendations
• XML Schema 1.1 Structures and Datatypes Recommendations
• XML Schema Definition Language (XSD): Component Designators (SCD) Candidate Recommendation (January 2010)

• Xerces2 Java 2.12.2 - tar.gz / Xerces2 Java 2.12.2 - zip
• Xerces2 Java 2.12.2 (XML Schema 1.1) - tar.gz / Xerces2 Java 2.12.2 (XML Schema 1.1) - zip

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.

The Xerces2 Java XML Parser 2.12.2 is a bug fix release, and is largely compatible with the previous release in terms of broad functionality offered. It fixes few bugs which were present in the previous release and also includes a few other minor enhancements.

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

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.

The Xerces-J 2.12.2 release is available in source code and precompiled binary (JAR files) form. Both Xerces-J packages are made available under the Apache Software License.