| Xerces2 Java Parser 2.4.0 Release |

Welcome to the future! Xerces2 is the next generation of high performance, fully compliant XML parsers in the Apache Xerces family. This new version of Xerces introduces the Xerces Native Interface (XNI), a complete framework for building parser components and configurations that is extremely modular and easy to program.

The Apache Xerces2 parser is the reference implementation of XNI but other parser components, configurations, and parsers can be written using the Xerces Native Interface. For complete design and implementation documents, refer to the XNI Manual.

Xerces 2 is a fully conforming XML Schema processor. For more information, refer to the XML Schema page.

Xerces 2 also provides an experimental implementation of the Document Object Model Level 3 Core and Load/Save Working Drafts. For more information, refer to the DOM Level 3 Implementation page.

Xerces is now able to parse documents written according to the XML 1.1 Candidate Recommendation, except that it does not yet provide an option to enable normalization checking as described in section 2.13 of this specification. It also handles namespaces according to the XML Namespaces 1.1 Candidate Recommendation, and will correctly serialize XML 1.1 documents if the DOM level 3 load/save API's are in use.

| Features of This Release |

The Xerces2 Java Parser 2.4.0 supports the following standards and APIs:

- eXtensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 Second Edition Recommendation
- Namespaces in XML Recommendation
- Document Object Model (DOM) Level 2 Core, Events, and Traversal and Range Recommendations
- Simple API for XML (SAX) 2.0 Core, and Extension
- Java APIs for XML Processing (JAXP) 1.2
- XML Schema 1.0 Structures and Datatypes Recommendations

| Backwards compatibility |

| According to the DOM Level 3 specification and DOM Level 2 errata the createElementNS and createAttributeNS methods convert empty string namespaceURI to null. Please, let us know if this change affects your application.

| Changes from Previous Release |

The Xerces2 Java Parser 2.4.0 fixes bugs and changes the XNI as follows:

- Added set/getNamespace methods to the xni.XMLResourceIdentifier interface.
- Added getEncoding method to the xni.XMLLocator interface.

For a more complete list of changes, refer to the Release Information page.

| Changes from Xerces 1.x |

| Xerces2 is a nearly complete rewrite of the Xerces 1.x codebase in order to make the code cleaner, more modular, and easier to maintain. It includes a completely redesigned and rewritten XML Schema validation engine. Applications using only the standard interfaces such as JAXP, DOM, and SAX should not see any differences.

| License Information |

| The Xerces-J 2.4.0 release is available in source code and precompiled binary (JAR files) form. Both Xerces-J packages are made available under the Apache Software License.

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