[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: XML Schemas: Best Practices
> > Issue: What is Best Practice for creating extensible content models? > Sorry to have picked up this conversation so late, but I would be very interested in airing any design issues involved in using xsd:redefine to extend content models. Briefly, we have a substantial core schema, and a requirement to customise this for various transaction partners. We wish to use the same message structure and element names across all partners, but the schema name and document namespace could vary. Given these constraints I believe that the cleanest way to specify that two different partners may have variant enumerations in their "product" element, which is of course nested very deep in the main message tree, is to use xsd:redefine. Using xsd:extend or xsd:restrict alone would - I think - force me to re-code the element declarations and enclosing definitions all the way up to the message root. Only xsd:redefine appears to allow me to do a spot variation. If I understand http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-1/#element-redefine correctly, xsd:redefine will work provided the redefined component has no target namespace or has the same target namespace as the redefining schema, so I have three plausible options - [1] implement all potentially redefinable components in the same target namespace, then rely on the instance's schemaLocation attribute to specify which extension of the overall schema should be used [2] implement all potentially redefinable components with no target namespace but have an outer level wrapper which perhaps redefines the root element with a partner specific namespace. [3] put it all in the noTargetNamespace! I have included a very small demo to give the idea - it validates with XSV. Any comments on the suitability of this approach for this requirement? Francis. a.xsd ===== <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <xsd:schema xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2000/10/XMLSchema" elementFormDefault="qualified"> <xsd:element name="root"> <xsd:complexType> <xsd:sequence> <xsd:element name="fred" type="ab"/> </xsd:sequence> <xsd:attribute name="weather" use="fixed" value="wet"/> </xsd:complexType> </xsd:element> <xsd:simpleType name="ab"> <xsd:restriction base="xsd:string"> <xsd:enumeration value="a"/> </xsd:restriction> </xsd:simpleType> </xsd:schema> a.xml ===== <root xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2000/10/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="a.xsd"> <fred>a</fred> </root> b.xsd ===== <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <xsd:schema xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2000/10/XMLSchema" elementFormDefault="qualified"> <xsd:redefine schemaLocation="a.xsd"> <xsd:simpleType name="ab"> <xsd:restriction base="ab"> <xsd:enumeration value="b"/> </xsd:restriction> </xsd:simpleType> </xsd:redefine> </xsd:schema> b.xml ===== <root xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2000/10/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="b.xsd"> <fred>b</fred> </root>
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