Chapter 4. Quality Control with Schemas

Up until now, we have been talking about the things all XML documents have in common. Well-formedness rules are universal, ensuring perfect compatibility with generic tools and APIs. This syntax homogeneity is a big selling point for XML, but equally important is the need for ways to distinguish XML-based languages from each other. A document usually attempts to conform to a language of some sort, and we need methods to test its level of conformance.

Schemas, the topic of this chapter, are the shepherds of markup languages. They keep documents from straying outside of the herd and causing trouble. For instance, an administrator of a web site can use a schema to determine which web pages are legal XHTML, and which are only pretending to be. A schema can also be used to publish a specification for a language in a succinct and unambiguous way.