Some further snooping reveals, that i am using the com.sun.org.apache.xpath.internal.jaxp.XPathFactoryImpl
factory, even tho i have xalan.jar on my path. Further when i set this System.setProperty("javax.xml.xpath.XPathFactory", "org.apache.xpath.jaxp.XPathFactoryImpl"); I still am getting the sun factory. I am assuming this is the root of the problem. How do i get the apache one? I even set the property on the cmd line to no avail. thanks. dave