http://www.soamag.com The SOA Magazine is a monthly online publication provided by SOA Systems Inc. and Prentice Hall/PearsonPTR and is officially associated with the "Prentice Hall Service-Oriented Computing Series from Thomas Erl." SOA en-us Copyright 2006-2010, SOA Systems Inc. http://www.soamag.com/I37/0310-1.php XML Schemas are a fundamental part of any XML-based service oriented architecture. They define the structure and content of the messages that are passed among services. Enterprise architects, DBAs and software developers often devote a lot of time to carefully designing data: they create enterprise data models, data dictionaries with strict naming and documentation standards, and carefully designed and optimized relational databases. Unfortunately, service designers and implementers often do not pay as much attention to good design when it comes to XML messages. There are several reasons for this. Some people feel that since the XML messages are transitory, it is not important how they are structured. Some decide that it is easier to use whatever schema is generated for them by a toolkit. Others decide to use an industry standard XML vocabulary, but fail to figure out how their data really fits into that standard or come up with a strategy for how to customize it for their needs. As with any data design, there are many ways to structure XML messages... SOA http://www.soamag.com/contributors/bio-pwalmsley.php#When:03.01.10