Re: Are Schema import statements transitive?

Hi Simon,

> It appears that import statements in schemas
> are NOT transitive. For example, consider
> the following situation:
>
>      import        import
> A ----------> B ---------> C
>
> We had assumed that schema A will automatically
> also import schema C (in fact, some parsers appear to behave in
> this way). But apparently this is not the specified behavior. One
> of the Xerces developers first brought this to our attention, and a
> closer reading of the XML Schema spec seems to corroborate this:
>
> Section 4.2.3 of Part 1 (Structures) states the following with
> respect to referencing schema components across namespaces:
>
> "Two things are required: not only a means of addressing such
> foreign components but also a signal to schema-aware processors
> that a schema document contains such references..."
>
> The <import> statement is the signal, of course. This seems to imply
> that schema A above would also have to import schema C.
>
> Can anyone else shed some light here?

See my previous post [1] for my understanding of this and there is also
a link to a previous discussion between Jeni and Henry about this issue.

Cheers,
/Eddie

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/xmlschema-dev/2002Mar/0190.html