Continuing my posts on getting some Web Services basic term explained for the business side of the company, I introduce XSD (Xml Schema Definition) that is nothing else that an XML document that formally describes the structure of another XML document. As I wrote in the previous post, the author of the XML document decides its elements. If somebody else needs to make use of that XML, they will look at its Schema Definition to create a formally correct document or to validate an existing one. In practice the XSD tells us what elements/attributes are present and their format, parent/child relationships, whether an element is empty or can contain text including any default values. Below you can find an excerpt for an hypothetical XSD describing all elements as strings.
[...]
<xs:complexType name=”Family“>
<xs:sequence>
<xs:element name=”dad“ type=”xs:string”/>
<xs:element name=”mom” type=”xs:string”/>
<xs:element name=”baby” type=”xs:string”/>
<xs:element name=”dog” type=”xs:string”/>
</xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType>
</xs:element>
[...]
Tags: IT, web services, WSDL, XML, xml document, XML Schema, XSD
I started playing Mafia II yesterday late at night, but as much as I like how the story is evolving and its cinematics, I still fail to understand why companies such as 2K spend a lot of efforts researching on historical events, weapons of the period, mocap, etc. but still have the lead character, Vito Scaletta, born in Italy, raised by native Italian speakers in an Italian American neighboorhood that is not able to speak a single Italian word without an American/New Yorker accent.
I must say that are also major translation blunders. We have literal translations from English to Italian, such as Vito’s Mamma saying “mio bambino” at the end of almost every stentence as a substitute for ”my child”. “Mio bambino” as it is used is not an expression an Italian would use, the meaningful translation should have been “bambino mio”. We have also nonsense such as “Sia benedica” which actually does not mean anything, maybe they meant “Be blessed” in English?? Come on guys couldn’t you afford a native Italian proof reader??
This is not the first case in terms of bad accents. I have also seen it playing Assassin’s Creed 2 demo where Ezio is an Italian speaking its own language with an English accent. At least, from what I saw they used proper Italian sentences there…
I gather that other non English speakers which have characters that are supposedly of the some mothertongue will inevitably feel frustrated by having native English speakers faking their own accents, and even worse use blatantly incorrect or even non-sense expressions. I wonder why the gaming industry is so focused on shaders and gigs of texture to fail at the very base of competing in this global market.
Tags: assassin creed's 2, ezio, italian speaking, mafia II, mio bambino, PS3. XBOX 360, Sia benedica, Vito Scaletta, voice acting fail
I am being asked by non-technical colleagues involved in web services about the difference between XSD and WSDL. As it Let me try to clarify in simple terms in few blog posts, starting with XML which is already causing a lot of confusion in itself.
XML (Extensible Markup Language) is the language being used for web services. XML files are nothing more than text documents following a set of rules (encoding) to make them both human and machine readable.
They are easily recognized when you open them with a text editor (e.g. Notepad) as key information is enclosed in markups that begin with “<” and end with “>”. In particular, similar to HTML, you can find tags starting with <tag> and ending with </tag>. The information between those two tags is called the content (it can be a value or left empty). You have an element with the combination <tag>content</tag>, elements can also define other elements in them as per the example below:
<family>Ciolini
<dad>Andrea</dad>
<mom>Vanessa</mom>
<baby>Beatrice</baby>
<dog></dog>
</family>
Let me conclude by highlighting some key points:
- XML is designed to describe and store information
- XML does not perform any function by itself
- XML is not tied to any specific hardware or software platform
- Tags need to be created by the author of the XML document and are not from a predefined list
- XML is different from HTML, they are both markup languages where XML carries the data and HTML is used to show them in your browser.
Tags: Extensible Markup Language, markup languages, Web Service Description Language, web services, WSDL, XML, xml document, XML Schema, XSD
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