XSD vs WSDL via XML

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 name=”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.

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Tags: Extensible Markup Language, markup languages, Web Service Description Language, web services, WSDL, XML, xml document, XML Schema, XSD