Configuration from the command line

The main command-line interfaces to Saxon are net.sf.saxon.Transform for running a transformation, net.sf.saxon.Query for running XQuery, and com.saxonica.Validate for validating a document against a schema. These commands allow many configuration options to be specified by command line options: for example if XML Schema 1.1 support is wanted, all three commands allow this to be requested using the option -xsdversion:1.1 (the default from Saxon 9.8). Many of these options correspond directly to the configuration properties available on the Configuration object.

For full details, including lists of the available command line options for each of these interfaces, see the following:

• Running XSLT from the Command Line
• Running XQuery from the Command Line
• Running Validation from the Command Line

For more specialized options, there is also a fallback mechanism. Each configuration property has a URI, which is always of the form http://saxon.sf.net/feature/SOME_NAME. Provided the property allows a string value (as most do), the property can be set from the command line using the syntax --SOME_NAME:value. For example the property identified by Feature.LICENSE_FILE_LOCATION has the URI http://saxon.sf.net/feature/licenseFileLocation, and it can therefore be set on the command line using an option such as --licenseFileLocation:c:/saxon/license.lic.