RELAX NG (REgular LAnguage for XML Next Generation)
Description
RELAX NG is a schema language that can be used for validating XML documents. It specifies what elements and attributes are allowed within a given document type, and how those elements may be combined. It performs essentially the same function as XSD (the XML Schema language defined by the W3C) but is considered by many to be both simpler and more flexible.
There are two different, but semantically equivalent notations that can be used to represent the content of a RELAX NG schema:
- XML syntax, which is relatively verbose but well-suited to automatic processing, and
- compact syntax, which encodes the same information in a more human-readable format.
Schema files are normally given the a file extension of rng if they use XML syntax or rnc for compact syntax.
Validation against a RELAX NG schema can be performed using a program such as xmllint (XML syntax only), Jing (either syntax) or RNV (compact syntax only). Conversion between XML and compact syntax can be performed using the program Trang.
microHOWTOs
See also
Further reading
- RELAX NG home page, James Clark
- RELAX NG Specification, OASIS, 3rd December 2001
- RELAX NG Compact Syntax, OASIS, 21st November 2002
- RELAX NG Tutorial, OASIS, 3rd December 2001
- RELAX NG, Eric van der Vlist, O’Reilly, December 2003