WS DevCon: Noah Mendelsohn: XML Schema

 

Apart giving an overview of the finer points of XML Schema language Noan made a very interesting point about the spec:

XML Schema is not just for XML documents. It was designed to be a generic language to describe data structures. So far, the usual use-case is to use it to define the structure of XML document. Noan made it very clear that nothing in the spec restricts its usage to describe data schemas held in other mediums such as in-memory representation, relational database, etc.

 

After the talk I?ve asked Noah is he knew if XML Schema is already being used beyond XML. I was specifically interested to know if databases would support XML Schema as a way to define the database schemas. Turns out, major DB players (DB2, SQL Server, Oracle) have fact started to work on it.

 

Memorable quote: ?There is no such thing as simple feature?