Validating XML Documents Against XML Schema

XML documents are increasingly being used as a format of data exchange. But for an XML document to be acceptable to different developers/users, the XML document should conform to a standard structure. XML Schema is an XML-based representation of the structure of an XML document. Through its support for datatypes and namespaces, XML Schema has the potential to provide the standard structure for XML elements and attributes. However, to check if an XML document conforms to an XML Schema, the document must be validated against that XML Schema. This paper explains the procedure for performing that validation using parsers for the Simple API for XML (SAX) and Document Object Model (DOM), as well as an XML Schema Design (XSD) validator.