Question

It is easy to define two elements with the same name like <any> in one XML schema and different permitted subelements. One should just declare two XSD types AnyType1 and AnyType2 as complexTypes which describes permitted subelements. Then one can declare element <any> in one context as <xs:element name="any" type="AnyType1" /> and as <xs:element name="any" type="AnyType2" /> in another context. My problem is that both AnyType1 and AnyType2 are recursive. To define a recursive type in XSD I use the following syntax

<xs:element name="any" type="AnyType1" />
<xs:complexType name="AnyType1">
    <xs:choice minOccurs="1" maxOccurs="unbounded">
        <!-- … some permitted subelements -->
        <xs:element name="any" type="AnyType1" />
        <!-- … some other permitted subelements -->
    </xs:choice>
</xs:complexType>

Disadvantage of this syntax is that we have to declare the element "any" on the top of schema and we can’t use <xs:element name="any" type="AnyType2" /> later to define recursive type AnyType2 somewhere later.

My question is: how to declare two recursive element types in the same XML schema in the same namespace.

The background of my question is following. I need to define XML schema which describe some tests. The tests should be combined (grouped) with respect of <all> and <any> elements (“or” and “and” operations) to describes results of some tests. In one context (in one place of XML file) I need to allow one subset of tests which can be grouped by <all> and <any> and in another place other subelements should be permitted. So I don’t want to define <anyTest1> and <anyTest2> elements or <n1:any> and <n2:any>. I want just use <any>, but if <any> is subelement of <TestBeforeProgramStart> I want allow one subset of subelements and if <any> is subelement of <TestAfterProgramEnd> another subset.

Answer 1

I found the answer on my question myself. It seems very simple.

It is not need to declare <xs:element name="any" type="AnyType1" /> before <xs:complexType name="AnyType1">, so the declaration of the type AnyType1 can be just following

<xs:complexType name="AnyType1">
    <xs:choice minOccurs="1" maxOccurs="unbounded">
        <!-- … some permitted subelements -->
        <xs:element name="any" type="AnyType1" />
        <!-- … some other permitted subelements -->
    </xs:choice>
</xs:complexType>

So the problem which I described seems not really exist.