International Business Machines Corporation

Matthew Colin Lovett

Suman Kumar Kalia

David Adiel Spriet

Stephen Michael Hanson

Sean K Dunne

Evangelos Mamas

A technique for serializing both logical and physical meta-model information in a single file is disclosed. In an embodiment, the logical meta-model information is serialized in an Extensible Marking Language (XML) schema compliant format, and the physical meta-model information is inserted into the logical meta-model in suitable locations such that the mappings between the logical and physical meta-models are preserved. In an embodiment, an XML 'appInfo' annotation is used to carry physical meta-model information used by multiple applications and suitably placed in a nested configuration with its corresponding logical meta-model information.

Single file serialization for physical and logical meta-model information

Within the scope of existing XML Schema specifications, an approach is provided to embed simple types within a complex type so an XML stream can have instances of the embedded simple types, even without the presence of XML elements. Because the approach is within the scope of existing XML Schema specifications, the approach is transparent to known XML parsers. With the approach, an XML schema will have a complex type with a mixed flag set to true and an element set to be a dummy element. The dummy element has a simple type and one of (i) a name of the dummy element and (ii) a name of the simple type is one of a predetermined set of names. This XML schema is for use with a parser which, on parsing the schema, will interpret the dummy element as one of an embedded simple type and an inherited simple type.

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Winchester, United Kingdom

Matthew Colin Lovett