Table of contents

Appendices

5.7 Conformance

An instance document may be processed against a schema to verify whether the rules specified in the schema are honored in the instance. Typically, such processing actually does two things, (1) it checks for conformance to the rules, a process called schema validation, and (2) it adds supplementary information that is not immediately present in the instance, such as types and default values, called infoset contributions.

The author of an instance document, such as a particular purchase order, may claim, in the instance itself, that it conforms to the rules in a particular schema. The author does this using the schemaLocation attribute discussed above. But regardless of whether a schemaLocation attribute is present, an application is free to process the document against any schema. For example, a purchasing application may have the policy of always using a certain purchase order schema, regardless of any schemaLocation values.

Conformance checking can be thought of as proceeding in steps, first checking that the root element of the document instance has the right contents, then checking that each subelement conforms to its description in a schema, and so on until the entire document is verified. Processors are required to report what checking has been carried out.

To check an element for conformance, the processor first locates the declaration for the element in a schema, and then checks that the targetNamespace attribute in the schema matches the actual namespace URI of the element. Alternatively, it may determine that the schema does not have a targetNamespace attribute and the instance element is not namespace-qualified.

Supposing the namespaces match, the processor then examines the type of the element, either as given by the declaration in the schema, or by an xsi:type attribute in the instance. If the latter, the instance type must be an allowed substitution for the type given in the schema; what is allowed is controlled by the block attribute in the element declaration. At this same time, default values and other infoset contributions are applied.

Next the processor checks the immediate attributes and contents of the element, comparing these against the attributes and contents permitted by the element's type. For example, considering a shipTo element such as the one in [The Purchase Order Schema], the processor checks what is permitted for an Address, because that is the shipTo element's type.

If the element has a simple type, the processor verifies that the element has no attributes or contained elements, and that its character content matches the rules for the simple type. This sometimes involves checking the character sequence against regular expressions or enumerations, and sometimes it involves checking that the character sequence represents a value in a permitted range.

If the element has a complex type, then the processor checks that any required attributes are present and that their values conform to the requirements of their simple types. It also checks that all required subelements are present, and that the sequence of subelements (and any mixed text) matches the content model declared for the complex type. Regarding subelements, schemas can either require exact name matching, permit substitution by an equivalent element or permit substitution by any element allowed by an 'any' particle.

Unless a schema indicates otherwise (as it can for 'any' particles) conformance checking then proceeds one level more deeply by looking at each subelement in turn, repeating the process described above.