[CAMEL-18605] Make Saxon the default for XML processing (xpath/xslt/xsd/xquery)

• Type: Wish
• Status: Open
• Priority: Minor
• Resolution: Unresolved
• Fix Version/s: Future
• Component/s: camel-xslt
• Estimated Complexity: Unknown
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Raymond
• Created: 11/Oct/22 13:59
• Updated: 16/Jun/24 10:47

Description

For XSLT and XPath (as a language in Camel) it's possible to set Saxon as parser. Saxon is used by default in XQuery, but not in XSLT and XPath. I see a lot of time that developers turn on Saxon by default.

The question is why won't we use Saxon as the default everywhere. Advantages:

1. Saxon is the industry standard. It's actively developed and used by most Java developers.
2. It's already used by most Camel developers (at least those with some knowledge on XML processing).
3. Actively developed with support for XPATH/XQUERYXSLT 3.0
4. The highest level of conformance to the W3C specifications.
5. All processing whether it's Xpath / Xquery / XSLT will use the same parser and will have same results.
6. No need to add additional configuration
7. No need for an XSLT-Saxon and XSLT component
8. Friendlier for newcomers to XML processing. (less confusion).

Disadvantage:

1. Bigger dependency
2. Major change (can break things, different output)