# About Saxon

To help you find your way around this documentation, there is a full table of contents and also an alphabetical index.

Release 9.3 continues Saxonica's tradition of early implementation of new W3C specifications. It now boasts a complete implementation of XQuery Updates, an almost complete implementation of XML Schema 1.1, which is approaching ratification as a W3C Recommendation, and early implementations of key features in the XSLT 3.0 and XQuery 3.0 specifications, which are still at working draft status.

W3C has announced its intention to rebadge XQuery 1.1 as XQuery 3.0, and XSLT 2.1 and XPath 2.1 as XSLT 3.0 and XPath 3.0 respectively. Throughout the Saxon documentation we use the new version numbers.

In addition Saxon continues to offer highly conformant implementations of XSLT 2.0. XPath 2.0, XQuery 1.0, and XSD 1.0. To avoid compromising this conformance, features from the newer versions of the standards are enabled only if explicitly requested. The conformance to these specifications has been upgraded to implement the latest published errata, as consolidated in the proposed Second Editions of the specifications.

This is the first functionality release in a year, and there are many new features and performance improvements. A full list is available and there is also a summary of the highlights.

A significant change in the 9.2 release was a repackaging of the functionality, and this is retained in 9.3: instead of the two products Saxon-B (open source) and Saxon-SA (commercial), there are now three editions: home, professional, and enterprise (HE, PE, and EE). The Home Edition remains open source, under the same very liberal licensing rules, but some of the more advanced features that were present in Saxon-B have not been retained in Saxon-HE, and are instead available only in the commercial packages Saxon-PE and Saxon-EE.

Much of the new functionality in this release is available only in the commercial offerings.

Like previous releases, this version is shipped simultaneously for the Java and .NET platforms.

This documentation covers all versions of the product, with differences noted where applicable. For a summary of the differences, see Product Packages.

This documentation (including full API documentation for both the Java and .NET platforms) is provided on the Saxonica web site and is also available for download either from SourceForge or from Saxonica. The download file is named `saxon-resources9-n.zip`, and is separate from the software download. It includes documentation for all editions (Saxon-HE, -PE, and -EE), on both platforms. The file also includes sample applications and Saxon-HE source code.

JavaDoc API specifications and .NET API specifications are also available.

A full change log is provided.

If you are looking for an XSLT 1.0 or XPath 1.0 processor, Saxon 6.5.5 remains available. However, Saxon 9.2 is capable of executing XSLT 1.0 stylesheets with identical results in the vast majority of cases, often with much better performance, so you may prefer to use the latest release.

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