Question

I am using the venetian blinds pattern to design my XML schema and it requires that all the types are declared at the global level and all the elements use the types defined in the global scope.

My question is this:

If I want to declare 2 elements which are simple strings with no other restriction, should I declare them in the global scope and then use them? Or can I directly declare a simple type inside the element itself? Am I breaking the venetial blinds in the second scenario I listed below?

For example, I can do one of the two:

<xsd:schema>
<xsd:simpleType name="ApplicantName">
    <xsd:restriction base="xsd:string"/>
</xsd:simpleType>
<xsd:simpleType name="ApplicantCountry">
    <xsd:restriction base="xsd:string"/>
</xsd:simpleType>
<xsd:element name="Application">
    <xsd:complexType>
        <xsd:sequence>
            <xsd:element name="ApplicantName" type="ApplicantName"/>
            <xsd:element name="ApplicantCountry" type="ApplicantCountry"/>
        </xsd:sequence>
    </xsd:complexType>
</xsd:element>
</xsd:schema>

Or I can use this.

<xsd:schema>
<xsd:element name="Application">
    <xsd:complexType>
        <xsd:sequence>
            <xsd:element name="ApplicantName" type="xsd:string"/>
            <xsd:element name="ApplicantCountry" type="xsd:string"/>
        </xsd:sequence>
    </xsd:complexType>

</xsd:element>
</xsd:schema>

Answer 1

I’d say: It depends. The goal of Venetian Blinds is to reuse types but unless some of your elements share a common restriction like, for example, field length imposed by a backend database you won’t gain anything from following this pattern religiously.