I agree with Michael. Not only are they incomprehensible, but for all but the most trivial schemas you simply cannot see enough detail on a single page to make sense of it.
I find them more useful as an interactive outlining tool to help find places in the schema to look.
Here’s an example of a *very simple* schema and what the diagram looks like (This one is from Stylus Studio).
http://xml.calldei.com/JsonXML
here
http://xml.calldei.com/JsonXML/files.xml?action=download&file=jxml.jpg
I included this diagram as an experiment on the web page but honestly looking at it I can’t make much sense out of it even though I’ve used the tool for years.
Anything much more complex than this and even on a huge monitor its only slightly useful if you can focus in and drill down on parts, while collapsing others,.
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David A. Lee
dlee@calldei.com
http://www.xmlsh.org
From: Michael Kay [mailto:mike@s...]
Sent: Tuesday, February 08, 2011 10:20 AM
To: xml-dev@l...
Subject: Re: Graphical DTD/XSD Viewer
On 08/02/2011 14:22, Rudder, Doug Jr wrote:
Hi, all -
A request just came in from our publishing systems manager asking if there is a good tool to represent DTDS or XSDs as a graphical image. One of our new associates wants something more understandable than a DTD/XSD (they are new to the XML world, but want to leverage our data in their product).
I don't currently use such a tool myself, so I thought I'd post the question to the list to find out what tools may be available for this purpose.
Thanks for your help,
============================
Douglas Rudder
XML Data Architect
Wolters Kluwer Health, Clinical Solutions
77 West Port Plaza, Suite 450
St. Louis, MO 63146
Phone: 314-216-2227
email: Doug.Rudder@w...
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All the popular XML IDEs (Altova, Stylus Studio, oXygen) offer graphical representations of schemas. Personally, I find them totally incomprehensible - I've always hated pictures that need a thousand words to explain them - but some people seem to like them.
Michael Kay
Saxonica