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Re: How do Name Spaces relate to Schemas?

• From: Charles Reitzel <creitzel@m...>
• To: xml-dev@l...
• Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2001 00:55:28 -0500 (EST)

>On Thu, 25 Jan 2001, Bill Conrad wrote:
>Subject: Name Space Question
>
>  Is namespace related only to a class of documents 
>as defined by an XML Schema or would each individual 
>document have its own namespace?
>
>  In other words, does [a] namespace uniquely identify 
>the elements defined in an XML Schema in relationship 
>to elements in another XML schema or the relationship 
>of elements in a document to other documents?

Either is possible.  As are other relationships.  It's up to the author of
the schema(s) and namespace(s) to decide what level of granularity is best.
AFAIK, both specs - NS and XSchema - are sufficiently flexibile.

IMO, the schema "scope" for a namespace is the most generally useful.
First, the relationship is almost self-explanatory: a large part what a
schema does is to define names.  Second, the XSchema provides explicitly for
this relationship w/ the "targetNamespace" attribute of the "schema"
element, possibly containing a URL to the schema document itself as the URI.

That's not to say other arrangements aren't useful or interesting.  Thus the
flexibility.

Namespaces don't have to work at the document or element level at all.  A NS
can be used to tag a global attribute (e.g. "xsi:type" in SOAP).

My $0.02 worth,
Charles Reitzel

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