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About data definition

When you design a report using an XML data source, you need to specify a data definition URL along with the XML data source URL in the Define XML Query dialog box. The data definition will contain a description of the XML data source file and Oracle Reports will form the XML query by reading this data definition.

If you have checked Validate Data Source in the Define XML Query dialog box, then your XML data will be validated against this data definition using the DOM parser. The XML PDS implementation expects the data definition in a specific format. If your Data Definition format differs from the expected one, you have two options:

Selecting a data definition

XML supports two major types of data definition:

Based on the data and report needed, you can choose between a DTD or an XML schema. The following table lists some of the differences between the two.

 

DTD

XML Schema

Datatypes supported

string

string, numeric, date

Format

simple XML, but not structured

Uses the XML tag structure