Question

Is it possible to validate attribute values against element names in an XmlSchema.
For e.g. For the XML fragment below, I want to ensure that the value in the ‘thisShouldBeAnElementName’ attribute should be an element name. So, valid values would be ‘a’,’b’ or ‘c’.

<root>
  <a/>
  <b/>
  <c thisShouldBeAnElementName='a'/>
</root>

Thanks.

Answer 1

In XSD 1.1 you can write an assertion:

<xs:element name="root">
  ...
  <xs:assert test="every $a in .//@thisshouldbeanelementname 
                   satisfies node-name($a) = .//*/node-name()"/>
  ...
</xs:element>

XSD 1.1 is currently implemented in Xerces and Saxon.