School of Information

While the information contained in XML documents can be accessed using numerous standards and technologies, accessing the information in an XML Schema currently is only possible using proprietary technologies. XML is increasingly being used as a typed data format, and therefore it becomes more important to gain access to the type system of an XML document class, which in many cases is an XML Schema. The XML Schema Path Language (SPath) presented in this paper provides access to XML Schema components by extending the well-known XPath language to also include the domain of XML Schemas. Using SPath, XML developers gain better access to XML Schemas and thus can more easily develop software which is type- or schema-aware, and thus more robust.