Let's try that again:

&descript: string

ISBN: /\d{13}/

priceUS: /\$\d+\.d{2}/

priceUK: /£\d+\.d{2}/

book

    @category:enumeration ?

    title:string

    author:string

    description:descript ?

    ISBNSet ?

          ^ISBN +

    ^priceUS 

books

    ^book *

where

/../ indicates a regular expression

? indicates an optional element

+ indicates 1 or more items

* indicates 0 or more items

^ is a reference to a previously defined element.

& is a complex type

a:b indicates that element a is of type b

Similar notation could handle groups

Kurt Cagle
XML Architect
Lockheed / US National Archives ERA Project

On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 2:01 PM, Kurt Cagle <kurt.cagle@g...> wrote:

You can also use a shorthand notation:

<book category="enumeration('children','adult','unknown') [0..1]">

<title> string() </title>

<description> string() [0..1] </description>

<author> string() </author>

<ISBNSet> [0..1]

     <ISBN> numeric(8,15) [1..*] </IBSN>

</IBSN>
<price> decimal(4,2) </price>

</book>

<bookSet> [0..1]

      <book> ref [1..*] </book>

</bookSet>

or even use a compact notation:

description:string

ISBN: /\d{13}/

book

    @category:enumeration ?

    title:string

    author:string

    description:description ?

    ISBNSet ?

          ^ISBN

    price:decimal(4,2) 

(Getting close to RNC, admittedly)

Kurt Cagle
XML Architect
Lockheed / US National Archives ERA Project

On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 12:23 PM, Michael Kay <mike@s...> wrote:

On 17/12/2010 14:33, Pete Cordell wrote:

I recently put together a schema language for newbies that aims to be simple.  The idea was that an example of your XML data could be your schema. Chances are that alone wouldn't be rich enough, so you can then add annotations to it to better describe what you want.  For that reason I've called it "Annotated XML Example" or AXE.

Vaclav Trojan has a similar schema-by-annotated-example specification in the form of XDefinition:

see http://www.syntea.cz/xdweb/userdoc/XMLPrague2009_en.pdf

<book category="optional enumeration('children','adult','unknown')">
<title> required string() </title>
<author> required string() </author>
<IBSN> optional numeric(8,15) </IBSN>
<price> required decimal(4,2) </price>
</book>

Michael Kay
Saxonica

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