Question

I’m going to validate and process XML provided by a third party. The XML conforms a standardized XML schema also provided by a third party.

For validation I use DBMS_XMLSCHEMA essentially this way:

-- pseudocode follows
declare
  xmldoc xmltype;
begin
  dbms_xmlschema.registerschema(schemaurl => name,
                                schemadoc => xmltype(schema),
                                local => true,
                                gentypes => false,
                                gentables => false
                                );
  xmldoc := xmltype(xml).createSchemaBasedXML(schema_name);
  xmldoc.schemavalidate;
end;

Validation seems to work except that I’ve run an issue with XML schema type xs:dateTime that is demonstrated below.

With XML schema:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
<xs:schema xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
  <xs:element name="datetime-issue">
    <xs:complexType>
      <xs:sequence>
        <xs:element name="time" type="xs:dateTime" maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
      </xs:sequence>
    </xs:complexType>
  </xs:element>
</xs:schema>

The validation of following XML:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<datetime-issue>
  <time>2011-06-15T16:58:23</time>
  <!-- Oracle doesn't like timezone ? -->
  <time>2011-06-15T16:58:23+02:00</time>
  <time>2011-06-16T09:55:01</time>
</datetime-issue>

Fails unexpectedly on the second time-element:

ORA-30992: error occurred at Xpath /datetime-issue/time[2]
ORA-01830: date format picture ends before converting entire input string
ORA-06512: at "SYS.XMLTYPE", line 354

AFAICS 2011-06-15T16:58:23+02:00 should be a valid XML schema xs:dateTime value and DBMS_XMLSCHEMA should not complain about that at all. Validation should also be independent on any database date format settings, right ?

So is this an Oracle quirk and if yes what are the workarounds ? Or should I configure Oracle and/or DBMS_XMLSCHEMA differently ? Or have I misinterpreted something or …

I’m running Oracle Database 11g Release 11.2.0.1.0.

If it’s worth of anything the example XML schema and data above validates correctly with exchangerxml that uses Xerces.

Answer 1

I think you can fix that by adding:

xdb:SQLType="TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE"

to the element in the XML schema. Though that may error on the non-timezone records…