XML in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

The Schema Namespaces

All standard schema elements are in the http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema namespace. In this chapter, we assume that this URI is mapped to the xs prefix using an appropriate xmlns:xs declaration. This declaration is almost always placed on the root element start-tag:

<xs:schema xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">

In addition, several attributes are used in instance documents to associate schema information with them, including schemaLocation and type. These attributes are in the http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance namespace. In this chapter, we assume that this URI is mapped to the xsi prefix with an appropriate xmlns:xsi declaration on either the element where this attribute appears or one of its ancestors.

In a few cases, schema elements may contain elements from other arbitrary namespaces or no namespace at all. This occurs primarily inside xs:appinfo and xs:documentation elements, which provide supplementary information about the schema itself, the documents the schema describes to systems that are not schema validators, or to people reading the schema.

Finally, most schema elements can have arbitrary attributes from other namespaces. For instance, this allows you to make an xs:attribute element a simple XLink by giving it xlink:type and xlink:href attributes or to identify the language of an xs:notation using an xml:lang attribute. However, this capability is not used much in practice.