what is the difference between XSD and WSDL

Question

What is the difference between an XML Schema and WSDL   The difference I noticed is that WSDL contains XSD and in WSDL we can declare operations  but not in XSD  Is that correct

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WSDL  Web Services Description Language  describes your service and its operations - what is the service called  which methods does it offer  what kind of in parameters and return values do these methods have   It s a description of the behavior of the service - it s functionality   XSD  Xml Schema Definition  describes the static structure of the complex data types being exchanged by those service methods  It describes the types  their fields  any restriction on those fields  like max length or a regex pattern  and so forth   It s a description of datatypes and thus static properties of the service - it s about data

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If someone is looking for analogy   this answer might be helpful   WSDL is like  SHOW TABLE STATUS  command in mysql  It defines all the elements request type  response type  format of URL to hit request etc    which should be part of XML  By definition I mean  1  Names of request or response 2  What should be treated as input   what should be treated as output   XSD is like DESCRIBE  command in mysql  It tells what all variables and their types  a request and response contains

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XSD   XML Schema Definition    XML   eXtensible Markup Language   WSDL   Web Service Definition Language    I am not going to answer in technical terms  I am aiming this explanation at beginners   It is not easy to communicate between two different applications that are developed using two different technologies  For example  a company in Chicago might develop a web application using Java and another company in New York might develop an application in C  and when these two companies decided to share information then XML comes into picture  It helps to store and transport data between two different applications that are developed using different technologies  Note  It is not limited to a programming language  please do research on the information transportation between two different apps    XSD is a schema definition  By that what I mean is  it is telling users to develop their XML in such a schema  Please see below images  and please watch closely with  load-on-startup  element and its type which is integer  In the XSD image you can see it is meant to be integer value for the  load-on-startup  and hence when user created his her XML they passed an int value to that particular element  As a reminder  XSD is a schema and style whereas XML is a form to communicate with another application or system  One has to see XSD and create XML in such a way or else it won t communicate with another application or system which has been developed with a different technology  A company in Chicago provides a XSD template for a company in Texas to write or generate their XML in the given XSD format  If the company in Texas failed to adhere with those rules or schema mentioned in XSD then it is impossible to expect correct information from the company in Chicago   There is so much to do after the above said story  which an amateur or newbie have to know while coding for some thing like I said above  If you really want to know what happens later then it is better to sit with senior software engineers who actually developed web services  Next comes WSDL  please follow the images and try to figure out where the WSDL will fit in                           Below is partial XML image                                                    Below is partial XSD image                                                     Below is the partial WSDL image                         I had to create a sample WSDL for a web service called Book  Note  it is an XSD but you have to call it WSDL  Web Service Definition Language  because it is very specific for Web Services  The above WSDL  or in other words XSD  is created for a class called Book java and it has created a SOAP service  How the SOAP web service created it is a different topic  One has to write a Java class and before executing it create as a web service the user has to make sure Axis2 API is installed and Tomcat to host web service is in place    As a servicer  the one who allows others  clients  to access information or data from their systems   actually gives the client  the one who needs to use servicer information or data  complete access to data through a Web Service  because no company on the earth willing to expose their Database for outsiders  Like my company  decided to give some information about products via Web Services  hence we had to create XSD template and pass-on to few of our clients who wants to work with us  They have to write some code to make complete use of the given XSD and make Web Service calls to fetch data from servicer and convert data returned into their suitable requirement and then display or publish data or information about the product on their website  A simple example would be FLIGHT Ticket booking  An airline will let third parties to use flight data on their site for ticket sales  But again there is much more to it  it is just not letting third party flight ticket agent to sell tickets  there will be synchronize and security in place  If there is no sync then there is 100   chances more than 1 customer might buy same flight ticket from various sources    I am hoping experts will contribute to my answer  It is really hard for newbie or novice to understand XML  XSD and then to work on Web Services

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WSDL - It contains the Operation such as Methods which a webservice provides and these method can accept simple data types such as int float etc and complex data types such as objects  vectors  arrays etc  so mapping this to an xml datatype xsd are used  and based upon the xsd an user who wants to acccess webservice from different platform can provide the data appropriately   Refer   ayazroomy-java blogspot com to read about basics of webservice

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XSD is schema for WSDL file  XSD contain datatypes for WSDL  Element declared in XSD is valid to use in WSDL file  We can Check WSDL against XSD to check out web service WSDL is valid or not

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XSD  XML schema definition  defines the element in an XML document  It can be used to verify if the elements in the xml document adheres to the description in which the content is to be placed   While wsdl is specific type of XML document which describes the web service  WSDL itself adheres to a XSD

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XSD defines a schema which is a definition of how an XML document can be structured   You can use it to check that a given XML document is valid and follows the rules you ve laid out in the schema  WSDL is a XML document that describes a web service   It shows which operations are available and how data should be structured to send to those operations  WSDL documents have an associated XSD that show what is valid to put in a WSDL document

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XSD is to validate the document  and contains metadata about the XML whereas WSDL is to describe the webservice location and operations

[web-services] what is the difference between XSD and WSDL

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