SAX Versions

SAX Versions

The first version, SAX 1.0, was released in May 1998. It provided the basic functional-ity needed to read elements, attributes, text, and to manage errors. There was also some DTD support. The details of SAX 1.0 can be found at http://www.megginson.com/SAX/ SAX1/index.html.

The current version, SAX 2.0, was released two years later in May 2000. Many of the SAX 2.0 interfaces are departures from SAX 1.0. Older interfaces are included, but dep-recated, for backward compatibility. Adapters are included for using SAX 1.0 parsers with SAX 2.0, and vice versa. SAX 2.0 also includes support for namespaces and exten-sibility through features and properties. Documentation is improved as well.

Code examples in Java are used throughout this chapter. The source code is avail-able on the Sams Web site. In order to compile and execute the sample code, you will need a Java 2 development environment and possibly a make utility. You can use just about any Java 2 development environment, such as the Software Development Kit (SDK) freely available from Sun Microsystems (http://java. sun.com/j2se) or an integrated environment such as Borland JBuilder.

In addition, you will need supplemental class libraries for SAX. Most of the examples use SAX 2.0 libraries available from Dave Megginson’s site. Alternatively, Apache Xerces includes a SAX 2.0 parser. Xerces is available at http://xml.apache.org. Once you’ve downloaded it, simply follow the installa-tion instructions by unpacking a zip file and adding the class libraries to your classpath. If you still have difficulty, consult the documentation supplied with the class libraries or Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) .