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I have been out of the XML world for a little while now, but someone just asked me a question and I have to admit, it's going to keep me up tonight if I can't come up with a better solution. And I'm a little rusty, to boot...
The issue is one of data dependency and validation. The goal is to enforce a restriction on pairs of data values- if the data associated with the node <Fruit><Name> is "Apple", then the value of the sibling node <Fruit><Abbrev> must be "APL". Effectively, the goal is to enforce a specific mapping from one enum into another within an XML document. The only way my associate could figure to capture this dependency is as follows:
<xs:complexType name="Fruit">
<xs:annotation>
<xs:documentation>Defines the valid values for fruit types</xs:documentation>
</xs:annotation>
<xs:choice>
<xs:element name="APL" type="xs:token" fixed="Apple"/>
<xs:element name="ORG" type="xs:token" fixed="Orange"/>
<xs:element name="BAN" type="xs:token" fixed="Banana"/>
<xs:element name="LEM" type="xs:token" fixed="Lemon"/>
<xs:element name="GRP" type="xs:token" fixed="Grape"/>
</xs:choice>
</xs:complexType>
All in all, this strikes me as a very ugly, even offensive, solution. My initial response was to forget about the validation- it wasn't worth it. Is there a way to preserve the data dependency validation without warping the instance document as the above schema fragment would require?
Thanks,
Linda
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