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Schema aware creation of XML.. Question

• From: David <dlee@calldei.com>
• To: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
• Date: Thu, 20 May 2010 11:46:54 -0400

I'm working on a project where I want to create XML according to a 
schema, given not enough information from the data itself.
For example suppose I have a element name and a name/value pair like

     element: record
     name:     field
     value:     "A value"

I want to constantly create a specific XML element from this, say for 
example
<element field="A Value"/>

Or perhaps
<element>
<field>A Value</field>
</element>


The source data does not give me enough data to choose between these 
(and possibly other) representations.
So how to choose ?

I was thinking that if I had a schema (say WSD, DTD, RNG etc ... ) that 
defined the type of element,
I could use the schema information to choose the correct format to create.
I understand there may be ambiguities but am willing to work with a 
subset of data formats to limit these.

Now I know if I use a Schema Aware xslt or XQuery processor, I could do 
the reverse.
That is I could read XML and then validate it against the schema, get 
the types etc.
But I dont know how that will help *generating* XML .
Certainly once I generated the XML I could use  xquery   validate { xml 
}  ... but I want the schema information *before* constructing the XML
(not construct every possible XML values and validate until it succeeds ).

How to do that ?

My thoughts are that I need to use a schema reading tool, probably in 
Java, to read the schema and then use the type information from the schema
to guide in the construction.   But are there other ways ?   I thought 
about reading the schema directly "as XML" (say an XSD or RNG xml 
formatted schema),
but I think that may be very difficult becauase the schema is not fully 
expanded.  There are a lot of "rules" that have to be processed for a 
schema to make sense.

Any other suggestions ? Am I missing some "obvious technology" or tools 
to do this ?

Any ideas very welcome.

-David



-- 
-------------------------
David A. Lee
dlee@calldei.com
http://www.calldei.com
http://www.xmlsh.org

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  • RE: Schema aware creation of XML.. Question
    • From: "Michael Kay" <mike@saxonica.com>