WDVL's XML Schema and SOAP Resources section is an extensive collection of
schema-related and SOAP-related specifications, articles, presentations, software,
and other schema sites.
If you can't find what you're looking for
from this page, try the parent XML directory,
or WDVL's XML Software Guide,
or our XML Specifications, Proposals,
and Vocabularies page.
RELAX NG (Next Generation)
- [pronounced "relax-ing"] an OASIS effort begun in the summer of 2001 that combines RELAX and TREX;
does not change the information set of an XML document, supports XML namespaces,
treats attributes uniformly with elements so far as possible,
has unrestricted support for unordered and mixed content,
can be combined with XML Schema datatypes.
RELAX NG Compact Syntax -
June 2002; describes a compact, non-XML syntax for RELAX NG;
has similarities to DTDs, XQuery Formal Semantics, and XDuce
Trang
- translates schemas written in RELAX NG into different formats (e.g., to a DTD)
Schematron - Rick Jelliffe;
popular alternative to XML Schema;
an XML Structure Validation Language using Patterns in Trees
currently undergoing ISO standardization
Examplotron - Eric van der Vlist;
uses instance documents as a lightweight schema language
RELAX (REgular LAnguage description for XML)
and How to RELAX documentation -
RELAX is a specification for
describing XML-based language, published in March 2000 as a
JIS (Japanese Industrial Standards) Technical Resolution.
[JIS is the bedrock of the
JSA (Japanese Standards Association).]
Like W3C's XML Schemas, RELAX grammars are represented in XML
instance syntax. XHTML 1.0, for example, can be described in RELAX.
RELAX borrows rich datatypes from XML Schema and is namespace-aware.
RELAX can be implemented easily and quickly. When XML Schema is
available, migration from RELAX to XML Schema will be possible without
loss of datatype information. RELAX is not controlled by any private
company. [Thanks to Sam Hunting for this explanation.]
TREX -
Tree Regular Expressions for XML by James Clark; see RELAX NG.
XML-Data -
Jan. 1998; a W3C Note by Microsoft, ArborText, University of Edinburgh,
DataChannel, and Inso Corporation
[first schema effort; pre-dated W3C's XML 1.0 Recommendation]
XML-Data Reduced (XDR) -
July 1998; Charles Frankston and Henry S. Thompson
refined and subsetted the Microsoft XML-Data Note; used in
BizTalk
Document Content Description (DCD) for XML -
Aug. 1998; a W3C Note by Tim Bray, Charles Frankston and Ashok Malhotra;
subsetted XML-Data in RDF syntax and added primitive datatypes
Schema for Object-oriented XML (SOX) -
Sept. 1998, revised July 1999; a W3C Note by Commerce One, Inc. (earlier version from Veo Systems);
added extensible datatypes, inheritance, namespaces, polymorphic content, and more
Datatypes for DTDs (DT4DTD) -
Nov. 1999; by Extensibility, Charles F. Goldfarb, Paul Prescod; leverages XML Schema datatypes in DTDs
Datatypes for DTDs (DT4DTD) 1.0 -
submitted to W3C by Extensibility, Charles F. Goldfarb, Paul Prescod.
Abstract: "The presented specification allows legacy systems that may presently be unable to convert their
DTD markup declarations to XML Schema, to utilize XML Schema conformant datatypes."
See DT4DTD Java SDK and documentation and
W3C's comment on DT4DTD submission.
Schema Adjunct Framework (SAF) -
November 2000; from TIBCO Extensibility;
used to associate domain-specific data with schemas and their instances, effectively
extending the power the schema
Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) 1.1 - May 2000;
W3C Note (not officially a W3C activity);
submitted by DevelopMentor, IBM, Lotus Development Corporation, Microsoft, and UserLand Software.
See more about SOAP elsewhere on this page.
The IETF, Best Practices and XML Schemas -
June 2002; by Leigh Dodds for XML.com; when the IETF declared XML Schema as
the schema language, fans of RELAX NG started flames
Beyond W3C XML Schema-
April 2002; by Will Provost for XML.com;
describes a "multiple-stage validation process that begins with schema
validation, but also uses XPath and XSLT to assert
constraints on document content that are too complex or
otherwise inappropriate for W3C XML Schema."
RELAX NG, Compared -
January 2002; by Eric van der Vlist for XML.com; introduction to RELAX NG by comparison to XML Schema
Comparing XML Schema Languages -
December 2001; by Eric van der Vlist for XML.com; highly recommended;
compares features of DTDs, W3C XML Schema, RELAX NG, Schematron, and Examplotron.
XML Schema Tutorial -
revised May 2002 or later; Roger Costello's excellent XML Schema tutorial
with examples and labs based on the final XML Schema Recommendation of May 2001
XML Schemas: Best Practices -
a set of Schema Design Guidelines created by discussions on xml-dev;
updated November 2001; Roger Costello
Using W3C XML Schema -
October 2001; by Eric van der Vlist for XML.com [excellent short intro, updated to reflect
final W3C Recommendation]
W3C's List of Schema Tools
including W3C's own XSV, an Open Source XML Schema Validator
by Henry S. Thompson and Richard Tobin.
[Note to W3C: Please give XSV a permanent URL.]
Turbo XML from
TIBCO Extensibility
- a multi-platform integrated Development Environment (IDE) for developing and managing
XML assets. With facilities for creating, validating, converting, and managing XML schemas,
XML files and DTDs;
support for DTD, XDR, BizTalk, SOX 2.0, RELAX, XML Schema, and several others.
Turbo XML includes XML Authority for schema creation and conversion,
XML Instance for document editing,
and XML Console for batch conversion and validation.
Extensibility also offers
XML Validate
for validating streaming
XML documents or messages against an XML Schema or DTD and
other XML solutions as well.
XML Spy by Altova is a
Windows-only Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for XML that includes:
XML editing and validation, Schema/DTD editing and validation, and
XSL editing and transformation;
supports DTD, DCD, XDR, BizTalk, and W3C XML Schemas.
XML Spy 4.x includes a
Browser Plug-In that allows live XML content editing from any desktop.
Sun Multi-Schema XML Validator (MSV)
supports RELAX NG, RELAX Namespace, RELAX Core, TREX, XML DTDs, and a subset of W3C XML Schema Part 1.
The validator can be used as a command-line tool (to validate XML documents against a schema or DTD)
or as a library (to validate documents or to manipulate schemas from inside a Java application).
dtd2xs,
a DTD to XML Schema translator and
xsbrowser
to navigate a DTD or XML-Schema
Stylus Studio
from eXcelon Corp. [formerly Object Design Inc.];
a development environment for defining XML schemas and creating and styling documents
XDRtoXSD - freeware
from IBM alphaWorks for converting Microsoft's
XDR to XML Schema (XSD).
Visual XML Tools -
IBM's suite of four tools includes Visual DTD which can generate a schema
plus Java classes from a DTD (and can generate a DTD from an XML instance,
generate XML samples from a DTD, import DTDs for structured viewing, and create DTDs)
DT4DTD (Datatypes for DTDs) -
from extensibility;
provides an extensible architecture for custom datatypes, as well
as support for datatypes defined in XML Schema and XML-Data
SOAP sites:
SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol)
is a protocol specification for invoking methods on servers,
services, components and objects that formalizes
the use of XML and HTTP as a method invocation mechanism. The 3 parts
defined by the protocol are:
"an envelope that defines a framework for describing
what is in a message and how to process it, a set of encoding rules for expressing instances of
application-defined datatypes, and a convention for representing remote procedure calls and
responses."
formatted like a W3C submission
by DevelopMentor, International Business Machines Corporation,
Lotus Development Corporation, Microsoft, UserLand Software
