Configuration from the command line

The main command-line interfaces to Saxon are the Transform for running a transformation, the Query command for running XQuery, and the Validate command 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.

The commands are available with minor variations on both the Java and .NET platforms.

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

• XSLT from the command line
• XQuery from the command line
• 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 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.