We have a situation where we want to restrict an element to having:
E.g.
<a>mytext</a> or
<a><b>xxx</b></a> But not:
<a>mytext<b>xxx</b></a> Given the xs:simpleContent mechanism I can restrict it to having only text, and of course I can define the element(s) it can be allowed, but does anyone know how I can combine the two to allow either text or subelements but not both?
Ta Jamie
Another option is for you to use inheritance. Your resulting XML isn't as pretty, but you get exactly the content you want:
<xsd:element name="field" type="field" abstract="true" /> <xsd:element name="subfield" type="xsd:string" /> <xsd:complexType name="field" abstract="true" /> <xsd:complexType name="subfield"> <xsd:complexContent> <xsd:extension base="field"> <xsd:sequence> <xsd:element ref="subfield" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded" /> </xsd:sequence> <xsd:attribute name="name" type="xsd:string" /> </xsd:extension> </xsd:complexContent> </xsd:complexType> <xsd:complexType name="no-subfield"> <xsd:complexContent mixed="true"> <xsd:extension base="field"> <xsd:attribute name="name" type="xsd:string" /> </xsd:extension> </xsd:complexContent> </xsd:complexType> Then your resulting XML would contain the following (assuming you have xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" declared somewhere)
<field xsi:type="subfield"> <subfield>your stuff here</subfield> </field> or
<field xsi:type="no-subfield">your other stuff</field> Most importantly, it disallows
<field xsi:type="subfield"> Text you don't want <subfield>your stuff here</subfield> More text you don't want </field> 
