Package com.saxonica.xqj

This package contains an implementation of the XQJ specification defined in JSR 225. This API never became part of the Java Standard Edition platform, but it is supported by a variety of Java-based XQuery engines.

Saxon's implementation of the XQDataSource class is SaxonXQDataSource. Generally, this is the only class that applications need to access directly (all other access can be done by using standard XQJ interfaces). However, if there is a need to mix XQuery access with other Saxon functionality such as schema processing, then it is often useful to cast the XQJ objects to their underlying Saxon implementation classes, which make additional methods available.

In general it is not possible to mix Saxon implementation classes of the XQJ interface with implementation classes from other vendors. That is, if an interface specifies that a value of an XQJ type must be passed as an argument, Saxon in general requires the value to belong to a Saxon implementation of that interface.

Although this implementation of XQJ is issued under the open source Mozilla Public License, users should be aware of the terms and conditions included in the XQJ specification (JSR 225) which may (under some interpretations) restrict the right to make modifications. In particular, the terms and conditions published in JSR 225 require implementations to pass the compatibility tests, and to contain no extensions. Because the terms and conditions for the XQJ specification do not comply with some definitions of "open source", the XQJ module is not included in the standard Saxon-HE jar files, but is issued separately.

JSR 225 was published to work with XQuery 1.0, and as a result, it does not support the richer type system of XQuery 3.1. For example, there are no mechanisms to supply maps and arrays as input to a query, or to handle maps and arrays in the query result. It is possible to work around some of these limitations by customizing the SaxonXQDataSource with a user-written ObjectConverter, provided you are confident that you are not thereby violating Oracle's licensing rules.

Despite the prohibitions on extending the JSR 225 interface, Saxonica's implementation of XQJ does allow XQuery 3.1 syntax to be used within the queries submitted for execution.