validating against a DTD

[Arvind Kini]

Hi all,
I am using IE 5.5 for validating a XML file against an internal DTD. Problem is that even if I remove a mandatory element from the XML document IE does not popup an error. When I try to open same XML doc in XMLSPY it gives error that an expected element is missing.

<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<!DOCTYPE employee[
<!ELEMENT employee (name,age,dateofbirth,grade,group,skill+,ext*)>
<!ELEMENT name (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT age (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT dateofbirth (month,date,year)>
<!ELEMENT month (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT date (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT year (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT grade (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT group (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT skill (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT ext (#PCDATA)>
]>
<employee>
<name>C.B.VIJAYKUMAR</name>
<age>23</age>
<dateofbirth>
<month>october</month>
<date>21</date>
<year>1977</year>
</dateofbirth>
<grade>G7</grade>
<group>e-Com</group>
<skill>VB</skill>
<skill>XML</skill>
<skill>ASP</skill>
<ext>2175</ext>
</employee>

When I removed the <grade> element from above code, XMLSPY gave error that mandatoru element is missing, but IE5.5 did not give any error.
Can anyone pls tell me why IE5.5 is unable to detect the error?
Or am I missing something elementary??
Thanks...

[Ajith Kallambella]

I would never trust IE, or atleast not use it for development and testing. Eventhough IE has ( what Microsoft claims ) inbuilt XML support, it is quite limited and not in sync with W3 recommendations. So beware!!
Use a validating parser for testing.
------------------
Ajith Kallambella M.
Sun Certified Programmer for the Java�2 Platform.
IBM Certified Developer - XML and Related Technologies, V1.