The XML Schema Complete Reference

• Authors: Cliff Binstock;Dave Peterson;Mitchell Smith;Mike Wooding;Chris Dix;Chris Galtenberg
• Venue: The XML Schema Complete Reference
• Year: 2002

From the Book:The authoring and editorial teams for this book have worked hard to bring you the cleanest, clearest, and most complete XML schema reference source on the market. Endless sweat, research hours, code testing, tech and definition reviews and counter explanations, e-mail queries, dialogue, and debates passed before this book came to fruition. Earnest efforts, stress-filled moments, and writing deadlines have finally gotten us to press time. Here is what this book means to us.The HistoryThere are always new and hot technologies to write about (C++, Java, SQL, .NET, XML schema, and much more). There are qualified writers eager to write a clear and concise bestseller for your bookshelf. There are millions of software developers eager to learn. There are more than a few publishers to choose from. Ultimately there are several technical books on the market within months of any new product, platform, service, tool, or language's release that seeks to describe, explain, clarify, and elaborate on a given technology's importance, utility, and implementation. However, there are very few really good books on the "why and when" that will actually teach developers emerging technologies. In fact, the hardest types of books to write discuss emerging technologies, because there really aren't many good examples. Furthermore, even the "experts" frequently disagree on what is "right."We spent many months—full time—writing this book. Collectively, we have something like 80 years of experience. Some of us are on the W3C Schema Working Group. We believe that this combined experience, as well as the determination writing this book, results in one of the few "really good books"previously mentioned. It takes the right combination of technology, authors, publishers, and readers to pull off a book.The BookThere are several, and probably soon to be lots, of books on the market that pertain to XML schemas. Despite this influx, we strongly believe that this book provides details few, if any, other books provide. Specifically, the overarching goal driving this book is to provide detailed examples of every XML schema component. In order to detail each component, this book contains an example of the corresponding schema document element, and all of the associated attributes. Many of the books on the market today provide surface details about schema components. However, this book provides detailed scenarios. Not only are there many pages and examples of each schema element, there is at least one example of every single attribute of every single XML schema document element. Having accomplished that colossal task, we added example after example integrating with many languages and technologies on many platforms. After all, what good is an XML schema by itself?The Web SiteThe http://www.XMLSchemaReference.com Web site corresponds directly to this book. The sole purpose of this Web site is to provide an online reference for developers writing XML schemas. Nominally, the Web site provides a place to download all of the files created while writing this book. These files include not only the XML schemas and the source code in various languages, but also all of the test cases for even the one-line code snippets: all of the code in this book is tested!The Web site is much more extensive than just a collection of files, however. In addition to the traditionally available downloads, http://www.XMLSchemaReference.com has lots simple online examples of every schema document element. There are tables for each element that indicate what attributes are possible, as well as a brief description. Although this Web site is not a tutorial, it is a fantastic quick reference for those who already understand schemas in general, but might forget the specific syntax. It is our hope that the Web site, like the book, becomes real reference material for lots of developers.The ValueOur goal is to make it easy to create an XML schema—whether you need a tutorial to write your first schema document, or you just need a reference book to write your 5,000th. Having created a schema, this book also gives you the same levels of assistance to incorporate an XML schema into your application. This book provides as much support as you need, without ever getting in the way. Have fun working with XML schemas—we do!We invite you now to take a tour through the world of XML schema components, beginning with the introduction provided for you in Chapter 1. We welcome your stories, additions, code samples, questions, feedback, and insights.Cliff Binstock [e-mail] [e-mail] [e-mail] [e-mail] [e-mail] [e-mail]