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XML Schema

This technology preview implements the core feature set of the XML DCD submission while using the element names of XML Data. While the two notes are similar in structure, there is some difference in keywords and the like. Note that the inheritance and subclassing features described in an appendix of the DCD note are not included in the preview implementation. Generally speaking, XML Schema loses relations, aliases, inheritance, and complex types as defined in XML Data.

At the time of writing, we are referencing the DCD note of 31 July 1998 and the XML Data Note of 5 January 1998.

The preview supports the following element types:

We will now explore XML Schema by building a simple schema definition for documents describing employees. This will be a very simple schema, with the following DTD:

<!ELEMENT EMPLOYEE (NAME, HIREDATE, MANAGER, DEPARTMENT)>
<!ATTLIST EMPLOYEE employment-category (full | part |contract) #REQUIRED>

<!ELEMENT NAME #PCDATA>
<!ELEMENT HIREDATE #PCDATA>
<!ELEMENT MANAGER #PCDATA>
<!ELEMENT DEPARTMENT #PCDATA>

Here's a sample document in this vocabulary:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<EMPLOYEE xmlns="http://myserver/HR/employeeschema.xml" employment-category="full">
	<NAME>Phineas Armbuster</NAME>
	<HIREDATE>1990-01-02</HIREDATE>
	<MANAGER>B. G. Trouble</MANAGER>
	<DEPARTMENT>Finance_Collections</DEPARTMENT>
</EMPLOYEE>

Defining a Schema

The element is the root of any schema definition. It is used to declare the name of the schema and any namespaces required in the schema. It will typically declare the namespaces for schemas and datatypes. Thus, for our example, we have:

<Schema name="EMPLOYEE" xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xml-data" 
	xmlns:dt="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:datatypes">

Elements

Element types are declared using the ElementType element. This element has one required attribute and four optional attributes:

Take the definition of the NAME element:

<ElementType name="NAME"
content="textOnly"/>

We've defined an element NAME that contains text, i.e., PCDATA. Let's look at a more challenging example, the EMPLOYEE element.

<ElementType name="EMPLOYEE" content="eltOnly" model="closed" order="seq">

	<attribute type="employment-category"/>
	<element type="NAME"/>
	<element type="HIREDATE"/>
	<element type="MANAGER"/>
	<element type="DEPARTMENT"/>

</ElementType>

We've said EMPLOYEE can only contain other elements (content="eltOnly") and only those elements we've specified in our schema (model="closed"). Moreover, the elements must all appear in the order listed (order="seq"). From there, we go on to provide a list of the attributes (in this case, employment-category) and elements (NAME, HIREDATE, MANAGER, and DEPARTMENT) that are contained in an EMPLOYEE element.

Attributes

The EMPLOYEE definition included an attribute element. Clearly, we have to be able to declare attributes in a manner similar to the way we define elements. Not surprisingly, the AttributeType element exists to do just that. This element has the following attributes:

The definition for the employment-category attribute looks like this:

<AttributeType name="employment-category"
required="yes" dt:type="enumeration"
dt:values="full part contract"/>

We can see that this attribute is required to appear in any element — like EMPLOYEE — that uses the attribute. It is an enumerated type with the permissible values full, part, and contract.

The Complete EMPLOYEE

At this point, it is worthwhile to present the entire schema for our simple document type. We've managed to do a few things here that we couldn't do in the DTD version of this document model. We pulled in foreign namespaces to allow us to talk about schemas and data types. We've strongly typed our elements and attributes, making life somewhat simpler for our application programmers. The content and model information was elevated to an explicit statement through the use of attributes. In the DTD, you had to parse the line:

<!ELEMENT EMPLOYEE (NAME, HIREDATE, MANAGER, DEPARTMENT)> 

to realize the EMPLOYEE element has sequential order and can contain only elements. Here, we've said so explicitly. Moreover, the model attribute lets us open up our model if our applications require us to do so, whereas DTDs are closed by definition.

<Schema name="EMPLOYEE"
   xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xml-data"
   xmlns:dt="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:datatypes">


   <ElementType name="NAME" content="textOnly"/>
   <ElementType name="HIREDATE" dt:type="date" content="textOnly"/>
   <ElementType name="MANAGER" content="textOnly"/>

   <ElementType name="DEPARTMENT" content="textonly"/>
	  <AttributeType name="employment-category" required="yes" dt:type="enumeration"
			dt:values="full part contract"/>
   <ElementType name="EMPLOYEE" content="eltOnly" model="closed" order="seq">
 	  <description>Simple element for describing employees</description>
 	  <attribute type="employment-category"/>
 	  <element type="NAME"/>
 	  <element type="HIREDATE"/>
 	  <element type="MANAGER"/>
 	  <element type="DEPARTMENT"/>
  </ElementType>
</Schema>

Other XML Schema Elements

Our little example omitted two schema elements supported in the technology preview: datatype and group. The datatype element is an extension of the dt:type and dt:values attributes for ElementType and AttributeType elements. The datatype element allows us to specify not only the type of an element or attribute, but also minimum and maximum values. It has the following attributes:

Attribute	Description
dt:type	optional; specifies the type of the element or attribute
dt:values	optional; when dt:type has the value enumeration, this attribute allows us to specify the permissible values
dt:max	optional; maximum value inclusive of the given value
dt:maxExclusive	optional; maximum value exclusive of the given value
dt:min	optional; minimum value inclusive of the given value
dt:minExclusive	optional; minimum value exclusive of the given value
dt:maxlength	optional; allows us to limit the length of certain data types

Let's apply this to HIREDATE. Suppose our company came into existence on July 20, 1969 and will be disbanded when the founder retires on December 31, 1999 — no Y2K worries for us then! The definition becomes:

<ElementType name="HIREDATE" content="textonly">
      <datatype dt:type="date" dt:min="1969-07-20" dt:max="1999-12-31"/>

</ElementType>

The group element organizes content into a sequence. It specifies which elements appear, how often, and in what sequence. The permissible attributes are:

Attribute	Description
maxoccurs	optional; the enumerated values 1 and * (at most one or many occurrences)
minoccurs	optional; the enumerated values 0 or 1 (a minimum of zero or one)
order	required; one of the enumerated values one, seq, many

The attributes minoccurs and maxoccurs specify the minimum and maximum number of times the group can occur. The order attribute specifies the sequence and content of the group. The literal one means exactly one of the elements of the group may occur. This is like the | (OR) operator in DTDs. The seq attribute value means the elements in the group all appear, and appear in the specified order. The value many means that any of the elements may appear (or not) and in any order.

If we wanted to modify our EMPLOYEE element so that an employee could belong to multiple departments with a supervisor in each, e.g., the employee belongs to multiple teams, we would say:

<ElementType name="EMPLOYEE" content="eltOnly" model="closed" order="seq">
   <description>Simple element for describing employees</description>
   <attribute type="employment-category"/>
   <element type="NAME"/>
   <element type="HIREDATE"/>
   <group order="seq" minoccurs="1" maxoccurs="*">
	<element type="MANAGER"/>
	<element type="DEPARTMENT"/>
   </group>
</ElementType>

This would be a valid document under the revised schema:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<EMPLOYEE xmlns="http://myserver/HR/employeeschema.xml" employment
			-category="full">
	<NAME>Phineas Armbuster</NAME>
	<HIREDATE>1990-01-02</HIREDATE>
	<MANAGER>B. G. Trouble</MANAGER>
	<DEPARTMENT>Finance_Collections</DEPARTMENT>
	<MANAGER>G. Marconi</MANAGER>
	<DEPARTMENT>Engineering</DEPARTMENT>
</EMPLOYEE>

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©1998 Wrox Press Limited, US and UK.

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