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Each version of Microsoft® XML Core Services (MSXML) introduces features not available in previous production releases of MSXML. Refer to the appropriate release for highlights of new features that were provided in that version.

Jul 19, 2003 The Microsoft® XML Parser (MSXML) 3.0 SP4 release offers a number of bug fixes and security fixes over the previous MSXML 3.0 SP releases. All MSXML 3.0 releases provide: Server-safe HTTP access. This includes ADFS 2.0, ADFS 2.1, ADFS on Windows Server 2012 R2 (also known as ADFS 3.0) and ADFS on Windows Server 2016 (also known as ADFS 4.0). This includes the following categories of questions: installation, update, upgrade, configuration, troubleshooting of ADFS and the proxy component (Web Application Proxy when it is used to provide.

What's New in MSXML 6.0

MSXML 6.0 ships with Microsoft Windows, except Windows Server 2003. Windows Server 2003 users may download MSXML 6.0 from the Microsoft Download Center. The following is a high-level summary of features that were introduced with MSXML 6.0.

Security
A number of enhancements have been made to MSXML 6.0 to eliminate security threats. Additionally, some features that are insecure, such as DTDs and inline schemas, have been turned off by default. For more information, see MSXML Security Overview.
XDR Schema Support Removed
XML Data Reduced (XDR) schema support has been removed. For more information, see Removal of XDR Schema Support.
Improvements in XSD Standards Compliance
MSXML 6.0 has improved XSD schema standards compliance. For more information, see Improvements in XSD Standards Compliance.
Basler vision driver download. Improvements in Schema Cache Behavior
MSXML 6.0 has changed the behavior of the XSD schema cache. The new version is less ambiguous when there are name collisions. For more information, see Improvements in Schema Cache Behavior.
XML Digital Signature Removed
MSXML 6.0 removed support for XML digital signatures. For more information, see XML Digital Signatures.
Normalization of Attribute Values
MSXML 6.0 SP2 added support for normalization of attribute values per the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) specifications for XML 1.0.

Other Changes in MSXML 6.0

Microsoft Xml Core Services 3.0

There are a number of other changes in MSXML 6.0. A few of the changes may require modifications to applications. For more information, see Changes in MSXML 6.0.

What's New in MSXML 5.0 for Microsoft Office Applications

MSXML 5.0 for Microsoft Office Applications first shipped with Microsoft Office 2003 and is designed for use specifically with applications targeting the Microsoft Office family of products. The following is a high-level summary of features that were introduced with MSXML 5.0 for Microsoft Office Applications.

XML Digital Signature
MSXML 5.0 for Microsoft Office Applications introduced support for XML digital signatures, allowing you to sign and verify XML data in DOM documents, DOM nodes, or SAX streams. For more information, see XML Digital Signatures.
Validation of DOM Nodes
In earlier versions of MSXML, only full DOM documents could be validated. MSXML 5.0 for Microsoft Office Applications now provides the ability to validate a single DOM node as an XML document fragment against the currently loaded DTD, schema, or schema collection. For more information, see the validateNode method.
Import DOM Nodes
MSXML 5.0 for Microsoft Office Applications provides the means to clone a node from one DOM document, so it can be added later into another DOM document using the appendChild method. For more information, see the importNode method.
Additional Second-Level DOM Properties
With MSXML 5.0 for Microsoft Office Applications, more second-level DOM properties have been introduced that enable you to use the setProperty and getProperty methods to more closely monitor or configure settings that affect XML parsing behavior. For more information, see Second-level DOM Properties.
Modified Support for Handling Inline Schemas
MSXML 5.0 for Microsoft Office Applications now includes new options in the DOM and SAX APIs that allow for support of inline XSD schemas.

What's New in MSXML 4.0

The following is a high-level summary of features new to MSXML that were introduced with MSXML 4.0. Note that the lastest and only supported version of MSXML 4.0 is MSXML 4.0 SP3.

Support for XML Schemas (XSD)
MSXML 4.0 provides extensive support for the final World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) XML Schema (XSD) Recommendation. For example, you can validate XML data and documents against XML schemas (XSD) using either DOM or SAX programming models through the use of either external schema cache or through the xsi:schemaLocation or xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation attributes. Although MSXML 4.0 does not support XPath 2.0, MSXML 4.0 provides extension functions, permitted by standards, to support handling XSD types in XPath and XSLT.
For more information, see XML Schemas (XSD) Reference.
Support for the Schema Object Model (SOM)
MSXML 4.0 also provides a way to reach schema information in validated documents using type discovery in SAX and the Schema Object Model (SOM) in DOM. In addition to this added support for the final XML Schema recommendation, MSXML continues to support XML-Data Reduced (XDR) and document type definition (DTD) validations.
For more information, see the SOM section.
Side-by-Side Functionality
MSXML 4.0 supports Windows Side-by-Side (SxS) installation under Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2. This means that when you install MSXML 4.0 under these qualified versions of Microsoft Windows, you have side-by-side access to other versions of MSXML. Potentially, SxS installation can also include support for running multiple released versions of MSXML 4.0 side by side under Windows. To do so, you will have to create a special application manifest, which will link your application to the specific version of MSXML 4.0. If you want to use MSXML in the same way as before, you don't have to do anything; MSXML installs in both global (as before) and side-by-side (new) mode on Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.
For more information, see MSXML and Windows.
Removal of Support for Replace Mode Installations
Before MSXML 4.0, you could use replace mode to make the latest MSXML component simulate MSXML 2.0, which Internet Explorer 5.0 and 5.5 used for presenting XML when browsing. In some cases, a special utility, xmlinst.exe, manipulated the Microsoft Windows registry to achieve this effect.
With MSXML 4.0, replace mode is no longer supported or required. MSXML 4.0 does not replace earlier versions of MSXML and cannot be used to substitute MSXML 2.0 for Internet Explorer. That means that if Internet Explorer is your default program to open XML files, and you double click on an XML document, Internet Explorer will not use MSXML 4.0 to show it.
You can however, still programmatically call and use MSXML 4.0 as was possible with earlier versions of MSXML so that it is used to manipulate XML within an HTML page using script.
For more information, see Initiate XSLT in a Script.
Version-Independent ProgIDs Removed
Version-independent ProgIDs were available in MSMXL and earlier releases and appeared such as the following when used in JScript code:
var xmldoc = CreateActiveXObject('MSXML2.DOMDocument')
or in Visual Basic code as:
Dim xmldoc As New MSXML2.DOMDocument
These types of version-independent ProgIDs are now removed with MSXML 4.0 and later versions. This guarantees that MSXML 4.0 and later versions of MSXML will not interfere with any versions of MSXML (2.0, 2.6, or 3.0) previously installed.
If you use the previous examples in your code, you will not instantiate the MSXML 4.0 DOM, but instead the prior replace-mode versions of the MSXML parser (MSXML 3.0 or earlier depending on the version of Windows or other installed applications on the system that use MSXML).
If you want to use MSXML 4.0, you must create a DOMDocume

Microsoft Xml 3.0