Question

What is XSD and how to use it in ASP.NET Web application.
I have stored procedures (Some of those are returning xml format values). Can i replace those with XSD?

Please suggest some good links to follow. I am pretty new to XSD.
I am sorry if this question is already answered.

Thanks in advance

Santhosh

Answer 1

Mr. Santosh, your client may be asking you to validate the data after
pulling it from db.. rather than accepting it right away he intends to
get it validated by you. And that is what XSD is capable of ..

XSD: XML Schema Definition, used to validate XML. Usually for incoming data, before accepting it, we pass it through our XSD validation with Schema file.
you can see Schema file as Set of rules, that suggests how the corresponding XML should be.

With XSD you can not only validate the structure/hierarchy of the XML tags but also,

• You can define Data type of the values of the nodes. [date, number,
  string etc]
• You can also define custom data_types, [example, for node , the possible data can be one of the 12 months.. so you need to define all the 12 months in a new data type writing all the 12 month names as enumeration values .. validation shows error if the input XML
  contains any-other value than these 12 values .. ]
• You can put the restriction on the occurrence of the elements, using minOccurs and maxOccurs, the default values are 1 and 1.

.. and many more …

There are some restrictions: as like,

• An element(name) defined in XSD file must be defined with only one data-type.
• You can’t validate a node/attribute using the value of another node/attribute.