Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | X | XML Journal

Desperately seeking ... help for XML Schema: are the complexities ... too complex? (Contrary Opinion).

Article Excerpt
Whether it's the Russian dolls, Salami Slices, or Chameleon Schemas discussed at www.xfront.com, the dizzying array of elements and attributes (and their complex interactions) found in the XML Schema specification, or the multitude of UML stereotypes at www.xmlmodeling.com, W3C XML Schema will disappear into oblivion without a non-XML syntax and a set of easy-to-use and -understand best practices and modeling techniques.

There's been a lot of interest in XML Schema, and well there should be. A lot of very smart people put the XML Schema spec together, and I'm sure it took an amazing amount of effort. But if I can be frank for a moment, XML Schema is rocket science. From noNamespaceSchemaLocation to block attributes and substitutionGroups, the XML Schema syntax is simply too complex.... STOP the MADNESS and just say NO! While I fault the XML Namespace Recommendation for many of the complexities haunting the XML Schema Spec today, many of the wounds are self-inflicted. One (small) case in point is XML Schema--complexType Inheritance.

complexType Inheritance Is Simply Broken

One of the main object-oriented features of XML Schema is complexType inheritance. Most tutorials (including most introductory...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!