Office 2003 XML

Creating a Simple Schema

As a simple example to get you started building schemas, examine the structure of Example C-1. You may have seen the document before (it was Example A-1 in Appendix A), but this time do an inventory of the parts it contains.

Example C-1. A simple XML document for definition in a schema

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="us-ascii"?>
<authors>
    <person id="lear">
        <name>Edward Lear</name>
        <nationality>British</nationality>
    </person>
    <person id="asimov">
        <name>Isaac Asimov</name>
        <nationality>American</nationality>
    </person>
    <person id="mysteryperson"/>
</authors>

This document contains an authors element, which itself contains multiple person elements. Each person element has an id attribute and may contain a name and a nationality element. For now, we’ll treat all of the textual content of the elements and attributes as text. One way to define this document in a schema is with a schema whose structure mirrors the document shown in Example C-2, called a “Russian doll” schema after the wooden matruschkas. The names of the elements being defined are in bold to make it easier to read.

Example C-2. A “russian doll” schema that describes Example C-1.

<xs:schema xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" >
  <xs:element name="authors">
     <xs:complexType>
        <xs:sequence>
           <xs:element name="person" maxOccurs="unbounded">
              <xs:complexType>
                <xs:sequence minOccurs="0" >
                   <xs:element name="name" type="xs:string" />
                   <xs:element name="nationality" type="xs:string" /> </xs:sequence> <xs:attribute ...