Re: [xml-dev] Validating an XML document having no DTD/XSD (using Xerces)

7/11/2002 5:30:57 PM, Elena Litani <> wrote:

>
>For validation against XML Schemas you can specify xsd files using the
>following properties [1]:
>http://apache.org/xml/properties/schema/external-schemaLocation
>http://apache.org/xml/properties/schema/external-noNamespaceSchemaLocation
>

More generally, the W3C XML Schema spec does not say how to associate an instance
with a schema, the schemaLocation property is just a "hint", so implementations
such as Xerces need to provide a programmatic way to do this.
This is a deliberate (and very appropriate!) choice, because an application 
program may need to over-ride the "hint" in the instance, or the author of
the instance may not have provided a hint, or the instance may have to
be validated against more than one schema, etc.  Some have suggested that
the namespace URI could (directly or indirectly) also provide a "hint" of 
which schema to apply.  I don't know if that is common in practice.
 

BTW, can anyone explain the RELAX NG philosophy of how one associates an
instance with a schema?  [I have a DOM WG action item to check with the
RELAX NG folks about this,  and this post just reminded me!!!]