Document Structure Description, or DSD, is a

schema The word schema comes from the Greek word ('), which means ''shape'', or more generally, ''plan''. The plural is ('). In English, both ''schemas'' and ''schemata'' are used as plural forms. Schema may refer to: Science and technology * SCHEMA ...

language for

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable ...

, that is, a language for describing valid XML documents. It's an alternative to DTD or the

W3C XML Schema XSD (XML Schema Definition), a recommendation of the World Wide Web Consortium ( W3C), specifies how to formally describe the elements in an Extensible Markup Language (XML) document. It can be used by programmers to verify each piece of item con ...

. An example of DSD in its simplest form: This says that element named "foo" in the

XML namespace XML namespaces are used for providing uniquely named elements and attributes in an XML document. They are defined in a W3C recommendation. An XML instance may contain element or attribute names from more than one XML vocabulary. If each vocabular ...

"http://example.com" may have two attributes, named "first" and "second". A "foo" element may not have any character data. It must contain one subelement, named "bar", also in the "http://example.com" namespace. A "bar" element is not allowed any attributes, character data or subelements. One XML document that would be valid according to the above DSD would be:

Current Software store

Prototype Java Processor
from BRICS

External links

DSD home pageComparison of DTD, W3C XML Schema, and DSD
{{Markup-languages-stub XML-based standards XML Data modeling languages