XML Schema (W3C) - Schema Components

Schema Components

The main components of a schema are:

• Element declarations, which define properties of elements. These include the element name and target namespace. An important property is the type of the element, which constrains what attributes and children the element can have. In XSD 1.1, the type of the element may be conditional on the values of its attributes. An element may belong to a substitution group; if element E is in the substitution group of element H, then wherever the schema permits H to appear, E may appear in its place. Elements may have integrity constraints: uniqueness constraints determining that particular values must be unique within the subtree rooted at an element, and referential constraints determining that values must match the identifier of some other element. Element declarations may be global or local, allowing the same name to be used for unrelated elements in different parts of an instance document.

• Attribute declarations, which define properties of attributes. Again the properties include the attribute name and target namespace. The attribute type constrains the values that the attribute may take. An attribute declaration may also include a default value or a fixed value (which is then the only value the attribute may take.)

• Simple and complex types. These are described in the following section.

• Model group and attribute group definitions. These are essentially macros: named groups of elements and attributes that can be reused in many different type definitions.

• An attribute use represents the relationship of a complex type and an attribute declaration, and indicates whether the attribute is mandatory or optional when it is used in that type.

• An element particle similarly represents the relationship of a complex type and an element declaration, and indicates the minimum and maximum number of times the element may appear in the content. As well as element particles, content models can include model group particles, which act like non-terminals in a grammar: they define the choice and repetition units within the sequence of permitted elements. In addition, wildcard particles are allowed, which permit a set of different elements (perhaps any element provided it is in a certain namespace).

Other more specialized components include annotations, assertions, notations, and the schema component which contains information about the schema as a whole.