Element Declarations

Elements are declared using the schema language xs:element Element. There are two basic methods for declaring an Element. An Element may be declared with a name Attribute that specifies the name of the Element. It may also, as with the column Elements in our example, have a type Attribute that indicates the name of the Element's type. Every Element must have a type, but there are various ways in schema language to specify the type. We'll talk in this chapter about those options as we encounter their usage.

In addition to being declared via a name, an Element may be declared by a reference using the ref Attribute. In this method the reference is to another declaration where the Element has been declared with a name. This method is discussed in more detail in the subsection that deals with global Elements later in this chapter.