Question

I’m generating C# classes from an OTA (Open Travel Alliance) XSD file. You can download the XSD file from here.

I create the C# class with the following command in a Visual Studio Command Prompt:

xsd FS_OTA_VehLocDetailsNotifRQ.xsd /classes /nologo

Within OTA_VehLocDetailsNotifRQ.POS[0].RequestorID I would expect to find an ID property. Yet the property generated by the XSD.exe tool is named ID_Context.

Can you explain why it does this, and whether I am able to force it to generate the correct (ID) property name?

Please don’t suggest I edit the generated file as that is not a maintainable approach.

Further edit after accepting the answer:

Looking at the XSD more closely and replacing the references with their attribute group definitions, the ID attribute can be seen in its attribute group:

<xs:attributeGroup name="UniqueID_Group">
  <xs:attribute name="URL" type="xs:anyURI" />
  <xs:attribute name="Type" type="OTA_CodeType" use="required" />
  <xs:attribute name="Instance" type="StringLength1to32" />
  <xs:attributeGroup name="ID_Group">
    <xs:attribute name="ID" type="StringLength1to32" use="required" />
  </xs:attributeGroup>
  <xs:attribute name="ID_Context" type="StringLength1to32" use="optional" />
</xs:attributeGroup>

I believe this to be a bug in the XSD tool.

Answer 1

Let’s see….

• the RequestorID contains complex content of type UniqueID_Type
• UniqueID_Type contains a reference to a group of attributes called UniqueID_Group
• UniqueID_Group is an attribute group and contains the following attributes:
  • URL
  • Type
  • Instance
  • a reference to an ID_Group
  • ID_Context

I guess the C# code “ID_Context” is generated because of the “ID_COntext” attribute in that attribute group… I don’t see anything wrong with that.

But I do agree – that ID_Group should include an “ID” property, but it seems xsd.exe has dropped that nested reference to the ID_Group – for whatever reason… it does appear to be a problem others have stumbled across in other scenarios, as well. Looks like xsd.exe cannot handle this task 🙁

Maybe also check out this discussion:

http://groups.google.com/group/OTA-Impl-Forum/browse_thread/thread/fa476cfb6e1fa7f7

Update: I also tried the svcutil.exe from WCF (.NET 3.0 and up) – no luck either 🙁

Error: Type ‘DateOrTimeOrDateTimeType’
in namespace
‘http://www.opentravel.org/OTA/2003/05‘
cannot be imported. Simple types with **
<union> content are not supported.
Either change the schema so that the
types can map to data contract types
or use ImportXmlTyp e or use a
different serializer.