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Announcing CTP1 of the XML Schema Designer

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XML Tools team has released the first CTP of the XML Schema Designer - a graphical tool for working with XML Schemas. The XML Schema Designer is integrated with Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 and the XML Editor to enable you to work with XML Schema definition language (XSD) schemas. If you have used the Visual Studio editor or notepad to edit your schemas, consider downloading this CTP and using it for editing your schema files. You can download it from Microsoft Downloads site. This CTP introduces the Schema Explorer - a tool that helps you navigate, search and work with schema sets. You can view a short video of the new functionality here. 

Here are some of the main features that are included in this CTP. 

Details

Overview

An XML Schema can contain multiple XML Schema files. The new XML Schema Designer lets you work with a schema set. That is, when you open an XML Schema file, the XML Schema Designer opens it as a schema set, which includes any included or imported schemas.

Tree View

The Schema Explorer displays pre-compiled schema set information in a tree structure. The tree structure is organized as follows:

  • At the top level is the schema set node.
  • The second level contains the namespaces.
  • The third level contains the files.
  • The fourth level contains the global nodes. This can include elements, groups, complex types, simple types, attributes, and attribute groups.

The following is an example of the tree structure:

Schema Set

    Namespace 1

        File 1

            Global node 1

    Namespace 2

        File 2

            Global node 2

The Schema Explorer enables you to search the schema set in the following ways:

  • Keyword search
  • Schema-specific search (for example, "Show All Derived Types")

Filter and Sort Feature

The Schema Explorer includes filter and sort options available on the Schema Explorer toolbar. The following filter options are available from the toolbar. The Show Namespaces and Show Schema Files options are selected by default.

  • Show Namespaces
  • Show Schema Files
  • Show Compositors (sequence/choice/all)

The following sorting options are available from the toolbar. The default is Sort By Type.

  • Sort By Type
  • Sort by Name
  • Sort by Document Order

Comments

  • Anonymous
    August 27, 2007
    PingBack from http://msdnrss.thecoderblogs.com/2007/08/27/

  • Anonymous
    August 27, 2007
    XML Schema Designer Aug 07 CTPが公開されています。

  • Anonymous
    August 27, 2007
    I just feel the overview section could have been a litte bit more uplifting than stating a very technical comment. The announcement and the overview section has no apparant connection and unfortunately its the first thing anyone reads.

  • Anonymous
    August 27, 2007
    Link Listing - August 27, 2007

  • Anonymous
    August 27, 2007
    The Microsoft XML Tools team has released the first CTP of the XML Schema Designer - a graphical tool

  • Anonymous
    August 28, 2007
    There has (finally) been some hype around VB 9's XML Literal stuff. Cory Smith noticed it, and yesterday,

  • Anonymous
    August 28, 2007
    Microsoft Release XML Schema Designer CTP1

  • Anonymous
    August 28, 2007
    Screenshots would have been nice, the one in Visual Studio .net is so buggy I'd at least like to visually see what's better about this one to make it worthwhile looking further.

  • Anonymous
    August 28, 2007
    re JCardina: there's a link to a video

  • Anonymous
    August 29, 2007
    WCF Sending Attachments with WCF BizTalk Server/XML/ESB Marty announces CTP3 of ESB Guidance How the

  • Anonymous
    August 29, 2007
    The XML team recently announced the release of the long awaited first XML Schema Designer CTP . The XML

  • Anonymous
    August 30, 2007
    Time for another weekly roundup of news that focuses on .NET and general development related content

  • Anonymous
    August 31, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    September 05, 2007
    What about Relax NG?  It's better than XSD.

  • Anonymous
    September 05, 2007
    Команда XML Tools порадовала нас ещё одним новым инструментом, который интегрируется в Microsoft Visual

  • Anonymous
    September 08, 2007
    Hello, nice to have the CTP installed. What is a little bit annoying though, the Schema Explorer is automatically showing and hiding on its own. I'd prefer have it always visible as are all other windows. Just display something like "There are no items to show for the selected document." when the file opened is not a schema, just as the "Document Outline" window does. Keep up the great work,  Jan

  • Anonymous
    September 08, 2007
    I'm really missing the old XSD designer surface. I think this EXPLORER style of editor doesn't solve the same visual understanding of a schema (and the ability to lower the learning threshhold) that the VS 2005 designer surface did. I'd really like to understand the reason it was dropped from Orcas? The XSD designer for Datasets is still there? Troy.

  • Anonymous
    September 12, 2007
    WCF Sending Attachments with WCF BizTalk Server/XML/ESB Marty announces CTP3 of ESB Guidance How the

  • Anonymous
    September 13, 2007
    It may have dropped out of Orcas, but I didn't see it mentioned anywhere that it will only install over an instance of it...

  • Anonymous
    September 24, 2007
    This was done in WPF? Rob R. suggested it was. If so, why?

  • Anonymous
    October 09, 2007
    I completely missed this announcement from the Microsoft XML team a month ago, that they will release

  • Anonymous
    October 09, 2007
    I completely missed this announcement from the Microsoft XML team a month ago, that they will release

  • Anonymous
    March 16, 2008
    Scott Hanselman talks about XML Tools in his new book " Professional ASP.NET 3.5: in C# and VB ". He

  • Anonymous
    November 06, 2008
    Beth Massi and Yang Xiao did a great Channel 9 session that centered on XML Literals and the XML Schema

  • Anonymous
    December 02, 2008
    WCF Sending Attachments with WCF BizTalk Server/XML/ESB Marty announces CTP3 of ESB Guidance How the WCF LOB Adapter SDK works with IChannelFactory and IChannelListener The XML Tools Team has just announced the first CTP of the XML Designer, which features