Aug

XSD vs WSDL (XSD)

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>
[...]