Java XML Parser v2 xpath problem

Question

I have a lot of trouble using the xpath functionality. I want to get the name of different elements. I'm using some xpath expressions which in my opinion should work (see http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath ), but they don't. I'm calling XMLNode.selectSingleNode.
For example :
/*/name()
name(/*[1])
name(/*)
name()
I've tried those with Saxon and they do work. Using the Oracle implementation an exception is thrown on most expressions. So what's wrong here?
Bye,
Jan

Answer 1

Consider this example
--- Test.java -----
import java.io.*;
import javax.xml.transform.sax.SAXSource;
import net.sf.saxon.sxpath.*;
import oracle.xml.parser.v2.*;
import org.w3c.dom.*;
import org.xml.sax.InputSource;
public class Test
public Test() {
try {
DOMParser domParser = new DOMParser();
domParser.parse(new FileReader("test.xml"));
XMLDocument document = domParser.getDocument();
InputSource is = new InputSource(new File("test.xml").toURL().toString());
SAXSource source = new SAXSource(is);
testXPathOracle(document,"count(//*)");
testXPathOracle(document,"name(/*)");
testXPathOracle(document,"name(/root)");
testXPathOracle(document,"/*/name()");
testXPathSaxon(source,"count(//*)");
testXPathSaxon(source,"name(/*)");
testXPathSaxon(source,"name(/root)");
testXPathSaxon(source,"/*/name()");
} catch(Exception e) {
System.out.println(e.getMessage());
public void testXPathOracle(XMLNode context, String xpath) {
try {
Node node = context.selectSingleNode(xpath);
System.out.println(node.getNodeValue());
} catch(Exception e) {
System.out.println(e.getMessage());
public void testXPathSaxon(SAXSource source, String xpath) {
try {
XPathEvaluator xpe = new XPathEvaluator();
XPathExpression exp = xpe.createExpression(xpath);
Object object = exp.evaluateSingle(source);
System.out.println(object);
} catch(Exception e) {
System.out.println(e.getMessage());
public static void main(String[] args) {
Test test = new Test();
--- test.xml -----
<root>
     <element/>
</root>
Result is on my computer:
Unknown expression at EOF: (count(//*))[1].
Unknown expression at EOF: (name(/*))[1].
Unknown expression at EOF: (name(/root))[1].
Error in expression: '(/*/name())[1]'.
2
root
root
root
I think the xpath expressions are valid. So what's wrong?