Saxon - how to call from Java with JBOSS 4.2.3

Question

My current transformer is xalan that came with Jboss and is in the path 'C:\\apps\\jboss-4.2.3.GA\\lib\\endorsed\\xalan.jar"

My batch file that starts up Jboss and sets all of the variables for it has a section for 'Use Compiling XSLT Processor (XSLTC)'. It has the current value of:

set JAVA_OPTS=%JAVA_OPTS% -Djavax.xml.transform.TransformerFactory=com.sun.org.apache.xalan.internal.xsltc.trax.TransformerFactoryImpl

If I put my copy of 'saxon9he.jar' into the 'C:\\apps\\jboss-4.2.3.GA\\lib\\endorsed\\' folder, how would I change the line above in my batch file to call the 'saxon9he.jar' file?

I'm guessing that its being called now by an API?

Answer 1

You can try changing the value of the TransformerFactory property to

net.sf.saxon.TransformerFactoryImpl

There's a risk that this will redirect all JAXP operations to use Saxon instead of Xalan, and in a big system like JBoss there's a significant possibility that there will be some application components that assume Xalan will be loaded and fail if they get something else. So a safer approach is to change only the code that you explicitly want to use Saxon, which you can do by replacing the standard JAXP call

TransformerFactory factory = TransformerFactory.newInstance();

by

TransformerFactory factory = new net.sf.saxon.TransformerFactoryImpl();

Apart from being more robust in ensuring you get the processor you expect, it's also a lot faster to instantiate the class directly rather than using the JAXP classpath search.