Tools for the Creation of Tamino Schemas

How you plan or define your Tamino schema depends very much on your starting position.

This document describes the options open to you under the following headings:

Defining a Schema from a DTD

You can start the process of defining a Tamino schema using an arbitrary external DTD.

Using the Import DTD function of the Tamino Schema Editor, you can read a DTD into the editor. You can then either use default mapping for the elements and attributes of the DTD, or you can specifically map each element and attribute that interests you.

A combination of both is also possible: you define default mapping and refine the mapping information for appropriate nodes, using the features of XML Schema that cannot be inferred from DTDs. Key XML Schema features not provided for by DTDs are:

  • XML schemas are themselves XML documents and can therefore be parsed as such.

  • Contents of elements and values of attributes can be specified as being of a specific datatype.

  • The number of instances of element types within a parent element can be restricted.

  • Text values in simple type elements or attributes can be restricted.

  • The number of items in white-space separated lists that make up attribute values can be restricted.

Defining a Schema from a given XML Schema

You can start the process of defining a Tamino schema using an arbitrary external schema that conforms to the XML Schema standard.

You can read the XML schema into the Tamino Schema Editor and add Tamino-specific information to it.

Notes:

  1. Tamino currently supports only a subset of XML Schema features. The schema editor supports full XML Schema, however.
  2. For information about converting Tamino schemas from former versions, see the migration documentation of the current Tamino version and its predecessors.
  3. At least the collection name and the schema name must be set, corresponding to the name attributes of tsd:collection and tsd:schemaInfo.

Defining a Schema from Scratch

You can define a Tamino schema from scratch, that is, you have neither an existing schema to migrate, nor an external DTD, nor an XML Schema as starting point for schema definition.

You can use the Tamino Schema Editor to build a Tamino schema. The advantage of using the Tamino Schema Editor over other schema editing tools is that the Tamino Schema Editor will not generate any syntax not supported by Tamino.

Of course, you can create a schema also using any arbitrary text editor. This, however, should be treated as error-prone.

Defining a Schema Using Third Party Products

You can also use a high-level tool from a third party vendor, for example XML Spy from Altova or <oXygen/> from SyncRO Soft Ltd., to create Tamino schemas.