Sun Java System Access Manager 7 2005Q4 Federation and SAML Administration Guide

XSD Overview

The purpose of an eXtensible Markup Language (XML) schema is to describe the structure of an XML document. The XML schema language is referred to as XML Schema Definition (XSD).


Note –

XSD is an XML-based alternative to the Document Type Definition (DTD). A DTD also describes the structure of an XML document, but it is not in the XML format.


The XSD files in this appendix specify the information that its corresponding service can host by defining the data and data structure. Typically, this structure is hierarchical and has one root node. Individual branches of the structure can be accessed separately, and the whole structure can be accessed by pointing to the root node. The data might be stored in implementation-specific ways, However, the data will be exposed by the service using the XML schema (specified here) and the Web Services Description Language (WSDL) definition of the service type (not specified in this documentation set). The XSD files in this appendix are reproduced here for your convenience. These files and a number of other XSD files are also available on the Liberty Alliance Project web site.