CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#xmlxsddataset
michale
michale

Reputation: 35

what is actually xsd file,is it a schema file or dataset file?

i know XSD is xml schema definition language file used for validating XML just like DTD was doing, but now i really doubt is it a xml file or dataset file?. The reason behind it is , i have c# project contains timberdata.xsd ,but when i opened that i could see a lot of data table that means thats dataset file??. But actually xsd what i know is a schema file for validating xml when i checked our database mydata.xml i could see an entry of shown below

<?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes"?>
<timberdataSchema xmlns="http://tempuri.org/timberdata.xsd">

So does this xml file is schema file i mean xsd file or the one which i can see in our project "timberdata.xsd" contains lot of datatable so dataset.

One more question is when i checked properties of timberdata.xsd i can see Customtool entry is filled with "MSDataSetGenerator" what does this means? i can see along with "timberdata.xsd" timberdata.xsc and timberdata.xss both are in xml format which is xsd file??

Upvotes: 1

Views: 10357

Answers (2)

Michael Kay
Michael Kay

Reputation: 163272

I think you are asking about file extensions. Windows and Unix, being fairly ancient operating systems, do not have any reliable type information associated with files, so they try to guess what is in a file from the last part of the file name (and/or the first few bytes of the file!). But file extensions are a matter of convention only; there is no standard registry of file extensions, and there is nothing to stop anyone creating a file with extension .xml that doesn't contain XML, for example. So a file with extension .xsd could contain anything at all.

In fact operating systems generally allow the user or system administrator to set up an association between file extensions and particular programs, so you might for example associate the .xsd extension with an XML Schema processor. But someone else might associate the same extension with a "dataset file processor" (whatever that is), and neither would be right or wrong.

Upvotes: 0

Alexei Levenkov
Alexei Levenkov

Reputation: 100527

XSD is always an XML file (XML is format, it does not define anything about what data is).

XSD can easily define parent-child relationship and basic type restrictions needed to define tables - so can be used as database schema. "MSDataSetGenerator" is the "custom tool" that builds whatever files/binaries are needed from the XSD whenever XSD is saved.

Here is explanation of custom tools - Single-File Generators and how MSDataSetGenerator is registered in Registering Single File Generators.

XSD can also define strange and complicated things if you want too...

Upvotes: 4

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