Office 2003 XML Schemas

The default schemas used by Word 2003, Excel 2003, and InfoPath to save XML documents will be available royalty-free at Microsoft’s Web site. The schemas will help customers who want to use XML technology to catalog and index Office documents. For example, the government of Denmark intends to use the schemas to catalog forms and publications for an e-government project.

An XML schema defines the structure of a particular type of XML document. The schemas just released by Microsoft define the formats that Word, Excel, and InfoPath use by default to save XML documents. InfoPath and the Professional Editions of Word and Excel can also import and export XML data in other formats, conforming to user-supplied XML schemas, which is how XML will probably be used with Office in practice. (See “Office 2003: XML Support Paves Way for Smart Client” on page 10 of the Sept. 2003 Update.)

Office XML document schemas have not been closely guarded secrets. In fact, the first version of the Excel XML Spreadsheet format was extensively documented on Microsoft’s Web site. However, releasing the information in the form of actual XML schema files will enable XML-processing applications and developer tools to automatically validate documents in Office XML format, and correctly generate documents in those formats, without requiring developers to create XML schemas for the formats from scratch.