an XML Collection...

ISBN

We have created an XML Schema simpleType definition for ISBNs. This ISBN definition covers all the legal formats of ISBNs world-wide.

Note: the following documents are best viewed with IE5.0 (or greater)

• The ISBN simpleType definition
• An example of a schema which uses the ISBN type
• A sample instance document

The ISBN schema was not able to check all the constraints on an ISBN number. One of the constraints on ISBNs is that the last digit must match a certain sum of the previous digits modulo 11. (This is all documented in the ISBN schema.) Clearly, this constraint is not expressable with XML Schemas. Consequently we needed to supplement the ISBN schema simpleType definition with something else. We choose to express the additional constraints using XSLT.  View the XSLT-validation document.

Points of Contact: Roger L. Costello and Roger Sperberg