Java Web Services Architecture

Appendix {A}

XML Schema

XML Schema definition language (XSD) is referenced throughout this book. XML Schema is a widely accepted mechanism for defining business rules for XML instance documents. Most Web service specifications–from SOAP to WSDL to BTP–use XML Schema to define their XML message vocabularies. A working knowledge of XML schema is a prerequisite to fully understanding the different Web service specifications. This appendix serves as a quick tutorial and also as a quick reference for the most common XML Schema elements.

The XML used to represent a list of Flute Bank employees’ data might look like Listing A.1.

Listing A.1: employeeList XML

While this XML is well formed–that is, without syntax errors–how does an XML parser ...