Microsoft XML Core Services (MSXML) are set of services that allow applications written in

JScript JScript is Microsoft's legacy dialect of the ECMAScript standard that is used in Microsoft's Internet Explorer 11 and older. JScript is implemented as an Active Scripting engine. This means that it can be "plugged in" to OLE Automation applica ...

VBScript VBScript (''" Microsoft Visual Basic Scripting Edition"'') is an Active Scripting language developed by Microsoft that is modeled on Visual Basic. It allows Microsoft Windows system administrators to generate powerful tools for managing comput ...

, and Microsoft development tools to build Windows-native

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...

-based applications. It supports XML 1.0, DOM, SAX, an

XSLT XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations) is a language originally designed for transforming XML documents into other XML documents, or other formats such as HTML for web pages, plain text or XSL Formatting Objects, which may subseq ...

1.0 processor,

XML schema An XML schema is a description of a type of XML document, typically expressed in terms of constraints on the structure and content of documents of that type, above and beyond the basic syntactical constraints imposed by XML itself. These constra ...

support including

XSD XSD (XML Schema Definition), a recommendation of the World Wide Web Consortium ( W3C), specifies how to formally describe the elements in an Extensible Markup Language (XML) document. It can be used by programmers to verify each piece of item con ...

and XDR, as well as other XML-related technologies.

Overview

All MSXML products are similar in that they are exposed programmatically as

OLE Automation In Microsoft Windows applications programming, OLE Automation (later renamed to simply Automation) is an inter-process communication mechanism created by Microsoft. It is based on a subset of Component Object Model (COM) that was intended for u ...

(a subset of

COM Com or COM may refer to: Computing * COM (hardware interface), a serial port interface on IBM PC-compatible computers * COM file, or .com file, short for "command", a file extension for an executable file in MS-DOS * .com, an Internet top-level d ...

) components. Developers can program against MSXML components from C,

C++ C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...

or from

Active Scripting Active Scripting (formerly known as ActiveX Scripting) is the technology used in Windows to implement component-based scripting support. It is based on OLE Automation (part of COM) and allows installation of additional scripting engines in the for ...

languages such as JScript and VBScript. Managed .NET Interop with MSXML COM components is not supported nor recommended. As with all COM components, an MSXML object is programmatically instantiated by CLSID or ProgID. Each version of MSXML exposes its own set of CLSID's and ProgIDs. For example, to create an MSXML 6.0 DOMDocument object, which exposes the IXmlDomDocument, IXmlDomDocument2, and IXmlDomDocument3 COM interfaces, the ProgID "MSXML2.DOMDocument.6.0" must be used. MSXML also supports version-independent ProgIDs. Version-independent ProgIDs do not have a version number associated with them. For example, "Microsoft.XMLHTTP". These ProgIDs were first introduced in MSXML 1.0, however are currently mapped to MSXML 3.0 objects and the msxml3.dll. Different versions of MSXML support slightly different sets of functionality. For example, while MSXML 3.0 supports only XDR schemas, it does not support XSD schemas. MSXML 4.0, MSXML 5.0, and MSXML 6.0 support XSD schemas. However, MSXML 6.0 does not support XDR schemas. Support for XML Digital Signatures is provided only by MSXML 5.0. For new XML-related software development, Microsoft recommends using MSXML 6.0 or its lightweight cousin, ''XmlLite'', for

native code In computer programming, machine code is any low-level programming language, consisting of machine language instructions, which are used to control a computer's central processing unit (CPU). Each instruction causes the CPU to perform a ver ...

-only projects.

Versions

MSXML is a collection of distinct products, released and supported by Microsoft. The product versions can be enumerated as follows:

Current

* MSXML 6.0 MSXML6 is the latest MSXML product from Microsoft, and (along with MSXML3) is shipped with Microsoft SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005,

.NET Framework 3.0 Microsoft started development on the .NET Framework in the late 1990s originally under the name of Next Generation Windows Services (NGWS). By late 2001 the first beta versions of .NET 1.0 were released. The first version of .NET Framework was ...

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...

Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, ...

and

Windows XP Service Pack 3 Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Windows 2000 for high-end ...

. It also has support for native

64-bit In computer architecture, 64-bit integers, memory addresses, or other data units are those that are 64 bits wide. Also, 64-bit CPUs and ALUs are those that are based on processor registers, address buses, or data buses of that size. A ...

environments. It is an upgrade but not replacement for versions 3 and 4 as they still provide legacy features not supported in version 6. Version 6, 4, and 3 may all be installed and running concurrently. MSXML 6 is not supported on

Windows 9x Windows 9x is a generic term referring to a series of Microsoft Windows computer operating systems produced from 1995 to 2000, which were based on the Windows 95 kernel and its underlying foundation of MS-DOS, both of which were updated in sub ...

. MSXML 6.0 SP2 is the last supported version for

Windows 2000 Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and oriented towards businesses. It was the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was released to manufacturing on December 15, 1999, and was officiall ...

. Windows XP SP3 includes MSXML 6.0 SP2. * MSXML 3.0 MSXML3 is a current MSXML product, represented by msxml3.dll. MSXML 3.0 SP2 first shipped with

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Windows 2000 for high-end and ...

Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Windows line of operating systems ( ...

6.0 and MDAC 2.7. Windows XP SP2 includes MSXML 3.0 SP5 as part of MDAC 2.81. Windows 2000 SP4 also ships with MSXML 3.0. By default, Internet Explorer version 6.0, 7.0 and 8.0 use MSXML 3 to parse XML documents loaded in a window. MSXML 3.0 SP7 is the last supported version for

Windows 95 Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of operating systems. The first operating system in the 9x family, it is the successor to Windows 3.1x, and was released to manufacturi ...

. Windows XP SP3 includes MSXML 3.0 SP9.

also includes MSXML 3.0 (SP10).

Obsolete

* MSXML 5.0 MSXML5 was a binary developed specifically for

Microsoft Office Microsoft Office, or simply Office, is the former name of a family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. It was first announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at COMDEX in Las Vegas. Initially a marketi ...

. It originally shipped with Office 2003 and also ships with

Office 2007 Microsoft Office 2007 (codenamed Office 12) is an office suite for Windows, developed and published by Microsoft. It was officially revealed on March 9, 2006 and was the 12th version of Microsoft Office. It was released to manufacturing on Novemb ...

. Microsoft has not released documentation for this version because Microsoft considers MSXML 5 an internal/integrated component of Office 2003. MSXML 5 is not included in

Office 2010 Microsoft Office 2010 (codenamed Office 14) is a version of Microsoft Office for Microsoft Windows unveiled by Microsoft on May 15, 2009, and released to manufacturing on April 15, 2010, with General availability release, general availability on ...

.Office 2010: What's removed: Office 2010 Resource Kit documentation on TechNet
/ref> * MSXML 4.0 MSXML4 was shipped as an independent, downloadable SDK targeted at

independent software vendor An independent software vendor (ISV), also known as a software publisher, is an organization specializing in making and selling software, as opposed to computer hardware, designed for mass or niche markets. This is in contrast to in-house software, ...

s and third parties. It is an upgrade for, but not a replacement to MSXML3 as version 3 still provides legacy features. There is no 64-bit version offered, although the 32-bit version was supported for 32-bit processes on 64-bit operating systems. Versions 4 and 3 may be run concurrently. MSXML 4.0 SP3 is the most recent version released in March 2009, SP2 support expired in April 2010, and MSXML 4.0 SP3 expired in April 2014. * MSXML 2.6 This is an early version of MSXML, and is represented by msxml2.dll. This product is no longer supported by Microsoft, and the CLSIDs and ProgIDs it exposes have been subsumed by MSXML 3.0. MSXML 2.6 shipped with

Microsoft SQL Server Microsoft SQL Server is a relational database management system developed by Microsoft. As a database server, it is a software product with the primary function of storing and retrieving data as requested by other software applications—which ...

2000 and MDAC 2.6. The last version for all platforms was released a
KB887606
* MSXML 2.5 This is an early version of MSXML, and is represented by msxml.dll. This version is also no longer supported by Microsoft, and the CLSIDs and ProgIDs it exposes have been subsumed by MSXML 3.0. MSXML 2.5 shipped with

as part of

5.01 and MDAC 2.5. * MSXML 2.0a This version shipped with

Internet Explorer 5.0 Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 (IE5) is a graphical web browser, the fifth version of Internet Explorer, the successor to Internet Explorer 4 and one of the main participants of the first browser war. Its distribution methods and Windows integrat ...

. No longer supported. * MSXML 1.0 This version shipped with

Internet Explorer 4.0 Microsoft Internet Explorer 4 (IE4) is a graphical web browser that Microsoft unveiled in Spring of 1997, and released in September 1997, primarily for Microsoft Windows, but also with versions available for the classic Mac OS, Solaris (operating ...

. No longer supported.

References

External links