XML Schema that allows anything (xsd:any)

Question

I need an example of XML schema that will allow anything and everything.

It might sound weird like this, but I need that to debug my current schema. The thing is tha

Answer 1

It's often assumed that an XML schema partitions documents into those that are valid and those that are not. It's actually rather more subtle than that. When you invoke validation, you need to say how you want the validation done. The most common invocation is strict validation, in which case either the name of the root element in your instance document must correspond to the name of a global element declaration in your schema, or it must have an xsi:type attribute that matches a global type definition in your schema. It follows that no finite schema will match every document instance under strict validation.

In principle you can also invoke a schema processor to do lax validation. In this case, if there is no match for the root element name among the global element declarations in the schema, validation succeeds. So the empty schema (no declarations) matches every instance document under lax validation.

You can also invoke validation against a named type. If you invoke validation against the named type xs:anyType, then every instance is valid, regardless what the schema says.

Caveat: I've considerably simplified the rules here.