David Brownell has released some new Java SAX2 utilities, including a more conformant version of the popular AElfred parser, an HTML parser, a DOM walker, and SAX2 wrappers for the Sun Technology Release 2 parser and Oracle XML parser.

Also available from the site are an implementation of the DOM Level 2 (in last call at the W3C) and a conformance test driver (discussed in an article at XML.com.) All of these tools are open source.

• SAX2 is an update to the SAX interface which adds a mechanism for querying and setting features (e.g. validation, namespace-awareness) and properties, along with a recommended set of core features and property names.