XML
schema element declarations can have simple or complex types. Attribute declarations
can have simple types. In general, elements with simple types and attributes
are mapped to fields in Designer. Elements with complex types contain other
elements and attributes, or attributes, and are generally mapped
to subforms.
Complex types are used to define all other elements. Complex
types can define element content, simple content, mixed content,
and empty content.
Any complex type element may or may not declare attributes.
How a subform is generated from element content in a data source
An
element that has only element content and optionally, attributes,
will generate a subform when dragged into the form design.
This
subform will contain objects for each attribute declared on the
element and objects or subforms for each child element.
Simple content
Simple content is where an element is declared
to contain simple content (text data) and may also declare attributes.
In the case where the element declares no attributes, the mapping
is the same as that for simple elements.
When attributes are
declared, the mapping for the elements is to a subform that is named
by using the element name. This subform will contain a field bound
to the element and additional fields for each attribute. The name
of the field bound to the element will be the name of the element
with the string
"_data"
appended to it. An example
of this is an element (for example,
<phone>
)
that has numeric content and an attribute named
type
:
<phone type="work">5554567</phone>
This
will generate a subform named
phone
containing
objects named
type
and
phone_data
.
The
type
object is bound to
$data...phone.type
, the
phone_data
field
is bound to
$data...phone
.
Mixed content
Mixed content exists when an element is declared
to contain a mixture of element children and text content.
Empty content
Complex types with empty content will be treated
like simple content, where the object that is created, and bound
to the element, has no content allowed.
Occurrence
XML
Schema occurrence attributes (minOccurs and maxOccurs) for element declarations,
which generate subforms, will be mapped to the repetition properties
for the subform.
Content models
Where the content model for the children of an
element is anything other than a sequence, the mappings will attempt
to model choice and all groups by using subformSets.
