XSD: unique attribute values?

[Ben Verbeken]

Hi all,

I'm having some trouble with a schema I'm working on. What I want to do is this:

<element name="e1"/>
<element name="e2"/>

I want to make sure that each name attribute is unique. In other words, that this is illegal:

<element name="e1"/>
<element name="e1"/>

Can I define this in an XSD, and if so: how?

Thanks a lot,
Ben

[Madhav Lakkapragada]

Maybe I am not clear on what the end use of this Schema is. If you could clarify please.

1. Do you want to restrinct the name to be unique in the Schema or in the XML instance of that adhers to this Schema ie; the element tag 'e1' must appear only ONCE in the XML file.
2. Is 'e1' defined as a global element ?

You can read the XMLSchema specification here.
BTW, sorry about the very delayed response.

- m

[Ben Verbeken]

1. Do you want to restrinct the name to be unique in the Schema or in the XML instance of that adhers to this Schema ie; the element tag 'e1' must appear only ONCE in the XML file.

The instance. I admit my example was very badly chosen, so I'll rephrase

What I want is an xsd construct so that that the following (piece of) an XML document is valid:

<foo bar="someString"/>
<foo bar="someOtherString"/>

and so that this is invalid:

<foo bar="uniqueString"/>
<foo bar="uniqueString"/>

So basically, I want the XSD to be able to put constraints (in casu: uniqueness) on attribute values over different tags.

Thanks a lot for replying, I really would love to find a solution for this one

Cheers,
Ben
[ July 31, 2006: Message edited by: Ben Verbeken ]

[Madhav Lakkapragada]

One construct which gaurentees uniqueness of "attribute value" (rather than the attribute name) is the 'ID'. So, one solution is that you define the attribute 'bar' of the 'foo' element to be like ID (or is it IDREF ?). Please look up the XSD documentation on how to define it. I don't have the documentation handy and my internet is very flaky today.
Thanks.

- m