Summary

If you're familiar with the old sitcom Newhart, you no doubt remember the two brothers who were both named Darrel. Although brothers with the same first name make for good comedy, similar names in XML documents can be problematic. I'm referring to name clashes that can occur when elements and attributes are named the same across multiple custom markup languages. This problem can be easily avoided by using namespaces, which allow you to associate elements and attributes with a unique name. Namespaces are an important part of XML because they solve the problem of name clashing among XML documents.

This hour introduced you to namespaces and also gave you some practical insight regarding how they are used in XML documents. You began the hour by learning the basics of namespaces and their significance to XML. From there you learned how namespaces are named. You then found out how to declare and use namespaces in documents. And finally, the hour concluded by revisiting XSD schemas and uncovering a few interesting tricks involving schemas and namespaces.