Introducing XML Schema Definition (XSD) Tool in .NET

The XSD or the XML Schema Definition tool is responsible for generating the XML schema or common language runtime classes using the XDR, XML, and XSD files, or from classes that are contained in a runtime assembly.

XSD (XML Schema Definition language) tool can be used for defining data type and the structure for XML documents or files. There will be one schema element at top level in an XML Schema and the schema element definition will always consist of namespace.

The schema element constitutes attributes, element declarations and type definitions and when it comes to type definitions there are two types and they are simpleType and complexType elements. The XML Schema element is used in defining fresh or new data types using both the type definitions namely simpleType and complexType over and above the existing built data types like integer and string.

simpleType :

This type of type definition refers to the value that are used as contents of an attribute or an element and this data type is known for the conspicuous absence of elements or attributes.

complexType :

This type of type definition refers to elements, which in turn may contain elements and attributes, and this data type is known for having elements and attributes.

The XSD (XML Schema Definition) tool is capable of generating an XML schema from an XML-Data-Reduced schema file, common language runtime DataSet classes from an XSD (XML Schema Definition) schema file, an XML schema from various types in a runtime assembly file, runtime classes from an XSD schema file, and an XML schema from an XML file.

The .NET Framework Tool is installed in combination with the XSD (XML Schema Definition) tool primarily for two main purposes and they are:

· For the purpose of generating Visual Basic or C# class files that can conform to the selected or specific XSD (XML Schema definition language) schema. For the argument value purpose the tool will take an XML Schema as an argument and the output so created will be made into a file that contains multiple classes and when such multiple classes are serialized using an XML Serializer, they conform to the schema.

· Using a .dll or .exe file, XML schema document will be generated. If you want to view the schema of the files that have been created or view the schema that was modified using attributes, then the used .dll or .exe file can be passed on as an argument to the tool so as to generate the XML schema.