So, to (hopefully) round out my series on Schemas, here is a short posting on namespaces . . .

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OK, so now we have a simple XSD and have added a little structure, lets look at getting started with data types and validations within XSDs . . .

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My last posting showed a very simple starting point for a schema. In this one I look at some of the other structural elements required to create schemas . . .

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One of the biggest benefits of XML is the ability to validate not only the structure of your documents, but also (within limits), the data within your elements and attributes. The most common way of describing both the structure and data validations are XML Schemas (XSDs).

This article is a beginners guide (from a beginner, to other beginners) on writing simple XSDs. If you're new to them, check it out. If you're more experienced, please use the "add comments" link at the bottom to point out all of the woeful simplifications and misunderstandings I've probably introduced :-> . . .

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It is funny how you can know the benefits of a technology and yet miss obvious use cases.

I have a number of clients that need to import simple, non-hierarchical data for providing addresses, historic order information and the like. The problem I sometimes have is that the agreed format and the data provided usually don't match . . .

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As I look at my meta-model, the concept of "types" of things (screens, properties, methods, validations, etc.) keeps on coming up . . .

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There are a couple of decisions you need to make when transforming an abstract grammar into a concrete XML syntax. Given this is my first time developing an XML schema, I thought I'd throw out some of my thoughts on handling them and see what other people thought . . .

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My in-house framework is going XML! I'm using it at a fairly high level of abstraction to describe objects, properties, relationships, screens, actions, validations, transformations and the like, replacing most of the coding for an application with DSLs using an XML concrete syntax. This posting looks briefly at why I'm using XML and the next one will consider some the issues when developing an XML schema . . .

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Want to see what JRuby, Groovy and other "scripting in Java" languages might bring? Check out this cool posting that Al Davidson pointed out.

Basically it is using JRuby to script the configuration of Spring in Java. Definitely an interesting approach (and it links to a Groovy implementation). This is the stuff we should be looking at folks. If we wanted to create 3000 line XML files, we could do that in Java. I think that John Paul was right at the frameworks conference - if we don't take the best of Ruby/Python/Groovy and merge it with the proven benefits of CF, the script kiddies *will* end up eating our lunch!

Thoughts?!

Matt asked on the ColdFusion Weekly what was wrong with XML. He suggested that people who don't like it should come up with a good argument for not using XML (rather than just saying they don't like it). Happy to oblige Matt - here are two!

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