targetNamespace and xmlns without prefix, what is the difference?

Question

In an xml schema document, if I have both the targetNamespace and the xmlns without a prefix.

Answer 1

namespace means like scope

targetNamespace is an attribute of schema element defines namespace i.e. package in XSD file. By convention we use URI/URLs, but we could use any string.

xmlns is an attribute is used to refer elements and datatypes that come from xmlns attribute value for the current element scope.

For Example:

• xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" is with prefix as xsd means namespace should be prefixed with xsd:
• xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" without prefix is default
• xmlns:p="http://www.example.com/People" is with prefix as p means namespace should be prefixed with p:

Where xmlns:xsd and xmlns:p are QNames and xmlns is local name.

The following image helps to understand XSD using Java analogy as per my knowledge: