Reference Schema Document Structure

Reference Schema Documents are a composition of NIEM conceptual components compatible with the NIEM conformance target REF. In such a way, Reference Schema Documents (REF) are specified more generally by a NIEM conformant Schema Document header.

Reference Schema Document Template

The following provides a conformant template layout for building a REF. In general, REFs will use each of the components named in the Variable Replacement Table.

Variable Replacement Table

This Variable Replacement Table references Naming and Design Rules (NDR).

Variable	Description	Usage	Reason
`{$NIEMRelease}`	The version number of the NIEM release referenced by this schema document	Required	Must reference a valid NIEM release
`{$ThisNamespacePrefix}`	Prefix of the namespace to which this schema document belongs	Optional	Defined as a convenience for internal referencing of the target namespace of this schema document
`{$ThisNamespaceURI}`	URI of the namespace to which this schema document belongs	Required	NDR Rule 9-83: Schema document defines target namespace NDR Rule 9-84: Target namespace is absolute URI
`{$OtherNamespacePrefix}`	The schema prefix of a namespace referenced by a namespace URI (Uniform Resource Identifier)	Optional	Required if other namespaces are referenced in this schema document
`{$OtherNamespaceURI}`	URI of a namespace used by this schema document	Optional	Required if other namespaces are referenced in this schema document
`{$DocumentVersion}`	The version of this schema document	Required	NDR Rule 9-85: Schema has version
`{$DocumentDescription}`	The description of this schema document	Required	NDR Rule 9-82: Schema has data definition
`{$Term}`	A well-known acronym or abbreviation used in this schema document	Optional	Used for machine-readable annotations
`{$TermLiteral}`	The full value of an acronym or abbreviation used in this schema	Optional	NDR Rule 10-75: appinfo:LocalTerm annotates schema
`{$ImportURI}`	URI of the schema namespace to import	Required	NDR Rule 9-90: xs:import must have namespace
`{$ImportRelativeSchemaPath}`	Path to a schema document, relative to the location of the current schema within the Information Exchange Specification (IES) directory structure	Required	N/A

Pattern

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="US-ASCII"?>
  <xs:schema 
      xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
      xmlns:nc="http://release.niem.gov/niem/niem-core/{$NIEMRelease}/"
      xmlns:appinfo="http://release.niem.gov/niem/appinfo/{$NIEMRelease}/"
      xmlns:structures="http://release.niem.gov/niem/structures/{$NIEMRelease}/"
      xmlns:ct="http://release.niem.gov/niem/conformanceTargets/{$NIEMRelease}/"
      xmlns:term="http://release.niem.gov/niem/localTerminology/{$NIEMRelease}/"

      xmlns:{$OtherNamespacePrefix}="{$OtherNamespaceURI}"
      targetNamespace="{$ThisNamespaceURI}"
      xmlns:{$ThisNamespacePrefix}="{$ThisNamespaceURI}"
      version="{$DocumentVersion}"

      xsi:schemaLocation="http://release.niem.gov/niem/appinfo/{$NIEMRelease}/ ../../appinfo/{$NIEMRelease}/appinfo.xsd
                          http://release.niem.gov/niem/conformanceTargets/{$NIEMRelease}/ ../../conformanceTargets/{$NIEMRelease}/conformanceTargets.xsd
                          http://release.niem.gov/niem/localTerminology/{$NIEMRelease}/ ../../localTerminology/{$NIEMRelease}/localTerminology.xsd"
      ct:conformanceTargets="http://reference.niem.gov/niem/specification/naming-and-design-rules/{$NIEMRelease}/#ReferenceSchemaDocument"

      elementFormDefault="qualified"
      attributeFormDefault="unqualified">

    <xs:annotation>
      <xs:documentation>{$DocumentDescription}</xs:documentation>
      <xs:appinfo>
        <term:LocalTerm term="{$Term}" literal="{$TermLiteral}"/>
      </xs:appinfo>
    </xs:annotation>

    <xs:import schemaLocation="{$ImportRelativeSchemaPath}" namespace="{$ImportURI}"/>

    <!-- ******** Schema components ******** -->

  </xs:schema>