> I forgot the other way... for a 1 schema solution define
> extra types book-seller-author, book-distributor-author etc
> then somehow add the appropriate xsi:type attribute to the
> <Author> element when doing the respective validation:
>
> <Author xsi:type="book-seller-author">
>
> <Author xsi:type="book-distributor-author">
>
> ...the relevant type definition will then be used instead of
> the standard definition for <Author>.
In XSD 1.1 xsi:type gets generalized by the "conditional type assignment"
mechanism, which allows you to assign a type based on a a rule expressed as
an XPath expression. I rather like the idea of allowing this rule to
reference parameters supplied by the application when invoking validation:
<xs:alternative type="book-seller-author"
test="$scenario='seller-view'"/>
<xs:alternative type="book-distributor-author"
test="$scenario='distributor-view'"/>
But that's not currently allowed by the spec.
Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/
