You didn't mention this in your original post. Maybe you should elaborate a little bit more what exactly it is you are trying to achieve. There are several modules around to use Java from Perl (or the other way around). For example Java a module that allows you to talk to a JVM (local machine or remote), and with Java::Import you can use Java classes in Perl. See below in other responses for more suggestions. Obviously you want to parse XML document and apply XSLT transformations, there are ways of doing this in a more Perlish way. Are you stuck with Saxon? And also where does Perl exactly come in? You could also consider a pure Java/Saxon solution. Please elaborate the problem a little bit more to clarify.