XML in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

Name

xsi:schemaLocation

Synopsis

The xsi:schemaLocation attribute locates schemas for elements and attributes that are in a specified namespace. Its value is a namespace URI followed by a relative or absolute URL where the schema for that namespace can be found. It is most commonly attached to the root element but can appear further down the tree. For example, this person element in the http://www.cafeconleche.org/namespaces/person namespace claims that it should be validated against the schema found at http://www.elharo.com/person.xsd:

<person xmlns="http://www.cafeconleche.org/namespaces/person"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.cafeconleche.org/namespaces/person
                      http://www.elharo.com/person.xsd">
  <name>
    <first_name>Alan</first_name>
    <last_name>Turing</last_name>
  </name>
  <profession>computer scientist</profession>
  <profession>mathematician</profession>
  <profession>cryptographer</profession>
</person>

If more than one namespace is used in a document, each namespace must have its own schema. The namespace URIs and schema URLs can be listed in sequence in the same xsi:schemaLocation attribute. For example, the xsi:schemaLocation attribute on this person element says that items from the http://www.cafeconleche.org/namespaces/person namespace should be validated against the schema found at http://www.elharo.com/person.xsd, while items from the http://www.cafeconleche.org/namespaces/names namespace should be validated against the schema ...