Using XML with Legacy Business Applications

Wildcards

Schema language supports wildcards with xs:any, xs:anyAttribute, and xs:anyType. There are some good technical reasons for having wildcards in certain types of applications. But for most schemas that describe documents intended for production or consumption by business applications, and especially for those that define data exchanged between organizations, wildcards tend to be a bit problematic. They can somewhat defeat the purpose of performing schema validation against a standard schema. I am, however, aware of some standards bodies discussing wildcard use in specific extension Elements. These extension Elements would allow people to exchange nonstandard data in otherwise standard documents and would not require any changes to the ...