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. Many of these options correspond directly to the configuration properties available on the Configuration object.

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 FeatureKeys.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.