XSD Schema 1.1 status and support

[Stefan_E]

With Oxygen v12 now out, I was wondering what the expectation for full XSD 1.1 support should be? (I'm aware of the Saxon validator, but was hoping for full support including graphical editing, documentation, etc., etc.)

So I googled a bit and got completely lost ... is 1.1 alive? Has it been abandoned? At best, I could find outdated information. Wikipedia sais it's a Candidate Recommendation, W3C lists it as Working Draft, last deadline was almost a year back ...

Anybody knows the status?

Stefan

[george]

AKAIK the work is in progress, although indeed it is not easy to find the schedule. The current status is "Last Call Working Draft":
http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema11-1/
***
This W3C Last Call Working Draft specifies the W3C XML Schema Definition Language (XSD) 1.1. It is here made available for review by W3C members and the public. XSD 1.1 retains all the essential features of XSD 1.0, but adds several new features to support functionality requested by users, fixes many errors in XSD 1.0, and clarifies wording.
***
Moving to proposed recommendation requires a number of steps, see:
***
The W3C XML Schema Working Group intends to request advancement of this specification and publication as a Proposed Recommendation (bypassing the usual Candidate Recommendation phase) as soon after 31 December 2009 as the following conditions are met.

*
A test suite is available which tests each required and optional feature of XSD 1.1.
*
Each feature of the specification has been implemented successfully by at least two independent implementations.
*
The Working Group has responded formally to all issues raised against this document during the Candidate Recommendation period.
***

Hope that helps,
George

[Stefan_E]

Hi George,

... indeed, I hoped somebody knew more

Here it reads that Candidate Recommendation was reached long ago. But here, in the same archive it read that this was apparently not so.

Since Dec. 31st, 2009 is then complete silence as far as I can tell. So the real question is: If I (that is, not my grand children) want to assert XML content: It appears that I need to learn Schematron then?

Stefan

[george]

Hi Stefan,

Learning Schematron is a good investment and it is very easy to learn. There are available also a few tutorials, check the ones from Roger Costello and Dave Pawson.
However, as you probably know oXygen includes Saxon Enterprise Edition and that offers along with the XSLT 2.0 and XQuery processors also an XML Schema processor that supports also the XML Schema 1.1 working draft, so you can use assertions if you use Saxon EE as the XML Schema processor (you can set that in oXygen for example through a validation scenario). It is true that you do not have other support than validation in oXygen. At some moment we will start working on adding also XML Schema 1.1 support in oXygen.

Best Regards,
George

[Stefan_E]

Hi George,

thanks - yes, I'm aware of Saxon's 1.1 support and also checked over on their board.

A tool set like Oxygen - and of course it's competitors - are the ideal place to be a loudspeaker for 1.1 adaption, which I judge a major step forward in schema capabilities - not least because of the syntactic homogeneity compared to a Schematron solution and local embedding.

So I'm seriously hoping we are not waiting here to see the grass growing and watch the paint dry ...; hope that 12.1 does better than 12.0 here

Stefan

[rleif]

I do not believe that the Saxon Validator for XSD 1.1 is functioning properly.
I have set the Preferences/XML Parser? Saxon EE Validation XML Schema version to 1.1 (-xsdversion: 1,1).
Configure Validation Scenario is set to Use custom validation scenario.
Scenarios for: XML Schemas =Schema_1_1
I have set Global Scenarios. However, what is the difference between a Global and a project scenario? I would prefer to use schema 1.1 only with this project.
Under Edit scenario Name=Schema_1_1, I entered URL of the file to validate=s(currentFileURL) Input type = XML Schema Document Validation engine= Saxon EE 9.2.1.2 automatic Validation= enabled Extension= None
An attempt at validation resulted in:

SystemID: D:\CytometryML\ACS\xsd\toc_RCL.xsd
Engine name: Saxon-EE 9.2.1.2
Severity: fatal
Description: Error reported by XML parser
Start location: 178:27

SystemID: D:\CytometryML\ACS\xsd\toc_RCL.xsd
Engine name: Saxon-EE 9.2.1.2
Severity: error
Description: Failed to parse schema document

<complexType name="Seq_Num_Test">
<attribute name="Ancestor" type="files:Seq_Num_Type"/>
<attribute name="Decendant" type="files:Seq_Num_Type"/>
<assert test="@Ancestor <= @Decendant"/>
</complexType>
Seq_Num_Type is a positive 8 bit integer.
As simple choice between XSD 1 and XSD 1.1 would be of great assistance and facilitate use of 1.1. Since there is only one parser (Saxon), the rest of the scenario could be automatically entered. Otherwise a complete example would help.
When the assert element was commented out, the Saxon parser was very slow.
Thank you.
Rleif

[george]

Your document is not XML wellformed. You cannot write < directly in XML, you need to escape it as <

FWIW here it is an example tested schema:

Code: Select all

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<xs:schema xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"> 

    <xs:element name="root">

        <xs:complexType>

            <xs:attribute name="x" type="xs:integer"/>

            <xs:attribute name="y" type="xs:integer"/>

            <xs:assert test="@x < @y"/>

        </xs:complexType>

    </xs:element>

</xs:schema>

Best Regards,
George

[rleif]

Thank you.
I figured out that I had to use > and reverse the arguments. The example was from IBM.

There is still a need for a user to be able to simply choose to use XSD 1.1 or a detailed set of instruction on everything one needs to change. I solved the problem by closing and opening oXygen. Saxon-EE has to be shown at the top in custom validation.
Is there anyway to obtain a log of the settings or subsets of the settings?

[Stefan_E]

Your document is not XML wellformed. You cannot write < directly in XML, you need to escape it as <

I think that's more than enough proof of the pudding: we need full support for 1.1 in the GUI: The reason people buy tools like Oxygen is the GUI. Else - if you really want to think about the < stuff: http://www.saxonica.com

Stefan

[george]

Is there anyway to obtain a log of the settings or subsets of the settings?

I am sorry, what settings are you referring to?

I see that I did not answer to one of the previous questions. Many oXygen options can be stored inside the project .xpr file if you set the "Project Options" option on a preference page. Similarly the scenarios can be saved either in the global options or in the project file.

Best Regards,
George

[ctaswell]

Could Site Admins please provide an update on the current status of XSD Schema 1.1 support in the editor?

Is there convenient GUI interface for XSD 1.1 support?

What is recommended approach? Develop in RelaxNG and then convert to XSD 1.1?

Please clarify current best practices... Thanks.

[george]

The current support for XSD 1.1 includes only validation though Saxon EE. For that you need to enable the XML Schema 1.1 support for Saxon from the oXygen options and then either make Saxon EE the default XML Schema processor (again in the oXygen options) or define a validation scenario and specify Saxon instead of the default (Xerces) parser for validation.

We plan to support XML Schema 1.1 in the near future. The first thing will be content completion support, both for editing XML Schema themselves and then for editing XML documents that refer to XML Schema 1.1. The next step will be to update the Diagram mode (visual XML Schema editor) to handle also XML Schema 1.1 constructs. As I said the timeframe for this is short/medium term, probably it will be part of version 14 although some of these may enter also in a 13.x release if they are ready earlier.

Best Regards,
George

[george]

I see that I did not address one of your questions. You should develop in XML Schema 1.1 directly, there is no convertor right now from Relax NG to XML Schema 1.1 and even if Trang will be updated to include that it is still more useful to design and implement a schema in the technology that you want to use, unless you target that technology only as an option you want to provide for people that cannot use Relax NG in this case because of various reasons.

Best Regards,
George

[pramirez]

Is there a general time frame for when Oxygen 14 would be released? We have been using Oxygen for a while there is schema 1.1 validation support the functions that are broken are frustrating.

[adrian]

Hi,

v14 will be released this summer(a release date has not been set yet). The XML Schema 1.1 support will most probably be implemented in v14.1(6-8 weeks after the initial version).

Regards,
Adrian