Bug in BizTalk, .NET XML implementation, or my brain…

Hello,

According the XML schema definition rules, you can create schemas that have no targetNamespace attribute. This allows including schemas to impose their namespace onto the included types. If your include hierarchy is linear, BizTalk doesn’t complain. If your include hierarchy has multiple references to the same XSD, BizTalk raises an error, stating that certain types are not defined. This behaviour appears to be a bug from my point of view. If you manually add the include statement (say via the VS.NET XML Schema Editor or Notepad) in the top level hierarchy, all the types become reusable; you can even use the \”Validate Schema\”, \”Validate Instance\”, and \”Generate Instance\” functions. Unfortunately, if you create a pipeline and try to set the Document Schema property, BizTalk will complain about the missing types. This is very inconsistent behaviour.

I’ve created a sample project to demonstrate this quirk. After unzipping the solution, follow these steps to reproduce the error:

1. Open the solution
2. Open DeliveryEvent.xsd
3. In the Properties window, click the ellipsis beside \”Imports\”.
4. In the Imports dialog box, select \”XSD Include\” and click \”Add…\”
5. Browse to the AddressTypes schema, select it, and press OK.

BizTalk will complain that the some of the types in the AddressTypes schema aren’t defined, even though they are:

[img:d99170b310]http://www.ourteacheronline.com/downloads/docs/schemaIncludeError.jpg[/img:d99170b310]

The goal is to set the data type of DeliveryEvent\\Address to the AddressType type, located in AddressTypes.xsd.

The include hierarchy is:

AddressTypes.xsd includes:
PersonTypes.xsd
BaseTypes.xsd

PersonTypes.xsd includes:
BaseTypes.xsd

If my knowledge of XML schemas isn’t faulty, DeliveryEvent [b:d99170b310]should[/b:d99170b310] be able to include AddressTypes.xsd.

If I assign a namespace to the various \”type library\” schemas and use import (instead of include) from DeliveryEvent.xsd, everything works. Unfortunately, I do not want to assign a namespace to my reusable type schemas and I shouldn’t have to.

Thank you in advance.

[b:d99170b310]Download the sample from:[/b:d99170b310]

[url]http://www.ourteacheronline.com/downloads/docs/TestSchemaReuse.zip[/url]