2 Structure of this document

Since much of the content in this document is interrelated, it is strongly recommended that the reader first review the Table of Contents. More generally, the sections herein contain:

• introductions to this document and to NZ xNAL (Sections 1 and 2)
• overviews of xNL, xAL, and xNAL (Sections 3-6)
• relational models that save you repeating schema fragments and helps keep file sizes down (Section 7)
• data quality best practice to ensure data is transferred error free and with minimum rework by the recipient (Section 8)
• a guide to the use of namespaces, elements and attributes (Section 9)
• a section introducing CVLs (but remains incomplete until consensus is reached on an agreed set of CVLs for NZ xNAL) (Section 10)
• using xNAL to exchange information between agencies - the crux of interoperability (Section 11)
• glossaries of key terms and acronyms; a discussion of New-Zealand-wide identifiers; and the XNL-basic, XNAL, XAL, XNAL and XAL formatting schemas (Appendix)

2.1 Terminology

This document assumes familiarity with terms, acronyms, and namespace derivations defined in OASIS xNAL (and are not redefined here).For example, this document uses but does not explain the derivation of local namespaces "PersonName" and "NameLine".

For explanations of terminology, see:

• OASIS xNAL Standard Description Document for W3C DTD/Schema, Version 2, available from http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/ciq/ciq.html - 4
• Glossary of key terms and Appendix B: Glossary of acronyms in the appendix to this document.

2.2 Diagrams

NOTE

The schema diagrams in this guide are generated by the XML Editing tool, XML Spy. They are designed to help understand the schema, rather than study the schema files directly.

Diagrams throughout these guidelines illustrate XML structures, using the following symbols:

Element	Symbol Example	Details
Mandatory single element		MinOcc=1, MaxOcc=1
Mandatory single element, containing parsed Character Data (#PC-Data). The content may be simple content or mixed complex content.		MinOcc=1, MaxOcc=1, type=xsd:string, content=simple
Single optional element		MinOcc=0, MaxOcc=1
Mandatory multiple element		MinOcc=1, MaxOcc=5
Mandatory multiple element containing child elements		MinOcc=1, MaxOcc=unbounded, type=DivisionType, content=complex
Group element (a named collection of elements to allow reuse in the construction of different complex types)		name=Subsidiaries
"Any" can be a placeholder for any element from a certain namespace.		See http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-0/ - any for details