JAXP 1.3 will add the following to the 1.2 API:

The 1.3 release is there to keep uptodate with the XML specifications, and will support:

- Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.1
- Namespaces in XML 1.1
- Document Object Model (DOM) Level 3:
- Simple API for XML (SAX) 2.0.1

Other XML JSRs have overlapping core areas. For example, many APIs required the XML Qualified Name,
and Namespace Context.

Expert Groups asked for features:

- JSR 31: JAXB asked for the definition of Java Objects for XML Schema Part 2: Datatypes
- The J2EE world asked for more precise control over the characteristics of the JAXP processor returned by the processor factory
- JSR 105 XML Digital Signature APIs need to control canonicalization

Denial of Service Exploits

Several denial of service exploits in processing XML have been exposed. These exploits are more the result of the nature of the XML specification vs. JAXP implementations. JAXP 1.3 will address these known issues and will define appropriate mechanisms to preempt future exploits.

Performance

Developers have also asked for the ability to signal the processor that it is OK to release processing related resources, e.g. "I am done with this sub-tree", in addition to providing guidance to anticipated processing patterns, e.g. "I know I am going to heavily modify the entire tree."

XPath / XSLT / XInclude

Enabling future support of XML Path Language (XPath) 2.0 and XSL Transformations (XSLT) Version 2.0 is a design goal. An analysis of XPath/XSLT 2.0 will be done by the Expert Group to insure that follow-on versions of JAXP will be able to support them with minimal changes to JAXP. The XPath/XSLT 2.0 implementation community will be engaged to encourage bi-directional guidance between the JSR specification and the early implementations
JAXP 1.3 is the next version of JAXP, an implementation independent portable API for processing XML with JavaTM.
After 7 months since the first proposed final draft (PFD) of the servlet 2.4 specification came out, but today PFD2 was released with numerous fixes and clarifications.

Read more here: http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=206

Comments are due by March 17

What do people think of JAXP as it stands? What would you like changed || added || solidified

In my opinion JSR173 (Java based API for pull-parsing XML)
should be part of the new JAXP specification.

Bye,
Carlo.