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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-23T08:00:49+00:00

Is there even any difference between the Altova XMLSpy XSLT transformer and the Saxon

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Is there even any difference between the Altova XMLSpy XSLT transformer and the Saxon XSLT transformer?

I mean how do i decide which to use when/if they are identical ?

I am aware that since their implementation is different most probably one would be more “efficient” or “faster”

Btw have anyone given this problem some thoughts before.. and would like to share their findings?

PS: i’m talking about when doing local-development and testing XSLT, how do i decide whether to use Altova / Saxon (i have both i just don’t know which to prefer, and whether if i should simply throw a die..)

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  1. Editorial Team

    Well Saxon can be used on any platform where Java runs and additionally on Windows with the Microsoft .NET framework. AltovaXML is a Windows only tool.

    As for differences, if you want to embed an XSLT 2.0 processor into your own program then Saxon offers a rich API whilst the API AltovaXML offers is limited to transforming input in the form of a string or a file to output in the form of a string or a file.

    A major shortcoming of AltovaXML in my view is its white space treatment, see the section “Whitespace in XML document” in http://manual.altova.com/AltovaXML/altovaxmlcommunity/index.html?x20_generalinformation.htm.

    AltovaXML (the community edition) is the only XSLT 2.0 processor available for “free” that offers schema-aware transformation, so depending on your needs this can be a big plus for AltovaXML.

    Note that there are also other XSLT 2.0 processors by now, on the .NET platform you have the choice between the .NET version of Saxon and XQSharp, which is a pure .NET implementation of XQuery and XSLT and certainly integrates better with existing Microsoft XML APIs than Saxon does.

    IBM has an XSLT 2.0 processor for its WebSphere pack and Intel has an XSLT 2.0 processor for its SOAP server (not sure whether that is still in beta or a released product).

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