Removing Ref from XML Schema

Youre on fire. 8)

As you might have guessed this was the first post for the problem you answered in the other thread. I posted it on 3 different forums and I got 1 response by noon yesterday which was pretty much, "Use XSLT".

Looks like you hit it on the nose, and I think the other stuff you gave me should be enough to make it work. The one thing that makes it easier is that I dont care about getting to the base type to insert into the original type. In otherwords, the:

<xsl:element ref="gender" minOccurs="0"/>

tag could be simply replaced with:

<xsl:element name="gender" type="genderType" minOccurs="0"/>

and I would not have to touch either of the other tags. That seems to be the best way to go, as the global tags are often referenced by multiple sources, so modifying them when we were done converting would affect all other areas that point there.

Fortunately, there are no imports in the schema I am using, it is all local to the schema, so I dont have to worry about pulling in external data. Thank you for bringing it up, though, I hadnt even thought about that, and its nice to have the code to do that if it ever comes up.

Again, thanks for the responses, it should make this much easier.

I do have another question though;

I am going to have to merge a lot of elements together. For example, I could have the ref element declaring the maxOccurs while the type element is declaring some other attribute I need, or vice versa. I need to get the greatest subset of the two. For example, I could have:

<xsl:element ref="gender" maxOccurs="1"/>
and later
<xsl:element name="gender" type="genderType" minOccurs="1"/>

Now, I realize that maxOccurs="1" and minOccurs="1" is redundant as they are the defaults, but its just to show the example. The end result I would want is the first element looking like:

<xsl:element name="gender" type="genderType" maxOccurs="1" minOccurs="1"/>

Any suggestions on that? I was thinking of just taking the referenced element, and copying all of the attributes from it, then going to the original element and copying all but the "ref" attribute, but what would happen if there was the same attribute in both tags? Is that even possible? Will it allow a reference to specify a particular attribute that is also present in the element it references?

Thanks,
Tim

Basically, the namespace prefix, (probably xs:, or xsd:) has to be hard coded in.

No no, don't do that, to set the namespace on an element, created with xsl:element, you must set the namespace attribute on the xsl:element element, to the namespace URI. Like this

<xsl:element name="{name()}" namespace="{namespace-uri()}">

This copies both name and namespace from the current element.

To work with namespaces in xsl, the trick is, not to worry about the namespace declerations ie. 'xmlne:xsd="whatever"'. And namespace prefixes ie. 'xsd:whatever'. The xsl engine will take care of these things.
All you need to do is, tell it what namespace an output node should belong to. This can be done either by setting the namespace attribute on an xsl:element node. or if you are creating a static node, by using a prefix that has been declared in the stylesheet. for example simply writing <xsd:element> directly in the stylesheet.
Or you can set the default namespace on the stylesheet, by simply setting the attribute xmlns="whatever".

I have another 2 part question.

1) I need to add a namespace to the output schema:

xmlns:xdb="http://xmlns.oracle.com/xdb"

This is for the Oracle XML DB elements and attributes. I tried using <xsl:attribute> to create it and it gave me an error on the "xmlns:xdb". I am assuming it doesnt like me adding a namespace to the schema. This is the code I was using:

<xsl:template match="/xsd:schema">
<xsd:schema>
<xsl:attribute name="xmlns:xdb">http://xmlns.oracle.com/xdb</xsl:attribute>
<xsl:attribute name=" xdb:storeVarrayAsTable">true</xsl:attribute>
<xsl:apply-templates/>
</xsd:schema>

Note I also need the attribute:

xdb:storeVarrayAsTable="true"

in the schema. It currently complains about "xdb:" saying it is not a valid namespace. Again, I can use the "xdb_" work around, but it would be nice to know the correct way to do this.

I looked at <xsl:namespace-alias> and that does not look like what I am needing. I still need the xsd: namespace, I simply need to add a namespace. Any help would be cool.

2) The second part of the question is basically the "xdb:" question again. If I add the namespace at the top of the schema with whatever syntax I am supposed to use for that, will later references to "xdb:" succeed? Specifically, I need to add an attribute to each <xsd:complexType> of "xdb:SQLType". I can do a search and replace on SQLType to xdb:SQLType, but again I want to do it the right way.

Thanks,
Tim

I see, I was confused as to where to declare the namespace. Thanks, that clears it up.

Now, it is working perfectly for the "storeVarrayAsTable" attribute, but not for the "SQLType" attribute. I have the following code for the schema declaration:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xdb="http://xmlns.oracle.com/xdb">
<xsl:key name="elmap" match="xsd:element" use="@name"/>
<xsl:key name="grpmap" match="xsd:group" use="@name"/>
<xsl:template match="/xsd:schema">
<xsd:schema>
<xsl:attribute name="xdb:storeVarrayAsTable" namespace="http://xmlns.oracle.com/xdb">true</xsl:attribute>
<xsl:apply-templates/>
</xsd:schema>
</xsl:template>
...

And that output the schema correctly as follows:

<xsd:schema xdb:storeVarrayAsTable="true" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xdb="http://xmlns.oracle.com/xdb">

However, later I build the SQLType attribute using the same method:

<xsl:template match="xsd:complexType">
<xsl:element name="{name()}">
<xsl:copy-of select="@*"/>
<xsl:if test="@name">
<xsl:attribute name="SQLType" namespace="http://xmlns.oracle.com/xdb"><xsl:value-of select="substring(concat('TY_',translate(translate(@name,'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz','ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ'),'_','')),1,30)"/></xsl:attribute>
</xsl:if>
<xsl:apply-templates/>
</xsl:element>
</xsl:template>

And I get the output:

<xsd:complexType name="TestElement" auto-ns1:SQLType="TY_TESTELEMENT" xmlns:auto-ns1="http://xmlns.oracle.com/xdb">

Is there special steps I have to take to use this later in the schema? Am I using it wrong the second time?

Thanks,
Tim

That's funny. I didnt realize I had the alias in the storeVarrayAsTable attribute, but I added it to the SQLType and it worked. I am using XMLSpy on the Microsoft parser. Interesting.

Again, thanks for the help,
Tim