Documents w/o namespaces

[Brad Wood]

I've developed a web service whose output is an XML document that
conforms to a schema.

Is it bad practice / unacceptable not to have a namespace associated
with my document?

If so, is it OK to just supply a default namespace and thus negate the
need for namespace prefixes on all elements?

Lastly, is it OK to reference the URL of the .xsd schema document itself
as the URI of the namespace?

[Martin Honnen]

Brad Wood wrote:

I've developed a web service whose output is an XML document that
conforms to a schema.

Is it bad practice / unacceptable not to have a namespace associated
with my document?
It is not necessarily bad practice but if you want others to consume
your XML and maybe integrate in other contexts then a namespace avoids
possible name clashes.
If so, is it OK to just supply a default namespace and thus negate the
need for namespace prefixes on all elements?
It is up to the instance document whether it uses a prefix or not, the
schema does not define that. If you have only one namespace then it is
certainly convenient to make it the default namespace and save
time/space necessary to create elements with prefixed names.
Lastly, is it OK to reference the URL of the .xsd schema document itself
as the URI of the namespace?

That is possible.

--

Martin Honnen --- MVP XML
http://JavaScript.FAQTs.com/