Data Dictionary for XML Schema?

["Philip Fearon" <pgfearo@googlemail.com>]

Is there a standards compliant way of 'wrapping' a W3C XML Schema with
a Data Dictionary type view (perhaps using XSLT or XQuery) so that it
can be queried using simpler XPath expressions?

I ask, because back in the days when I did relational database work,
you could find all you needed to know about the Schema using standard
SQL queries against the the Data Dictionary which represented a
virtual view of the Schema as a series of view tables. It seems that
there should be an equivalent for the XML Schema.

Yes, you can probably get everything you need from the collection of
raw XSD files that make up an XML Schema, but this would require
significant knowledge of the W3C Schema structure and some fairly
complex XPath.

Would it be useful if there were a number of standard 'view tables'
(or node trees)  on XML Schemas that could be queried (more reliably
and with simpler XPath) instead of the raw XML itself?


Thanks

Phil Fearon
http://www.sketchpath.com