Abstract Type Checking with XML Schema in XACT

XACT is an extension of Java for making type-safe XML transformations. Unlike other approaches, XACT provides a programming model based on XML templates and XPath together with a type checker based on data-flow analysis. We show how to extend the data-flow analysis technique used in the XACT system to support XML Schema as type formalism. The technique is able to model advanced features, such as type derivations and overloaded local element declarations, and also datatypes of attribute values and character data. Moreover, we introduce optional type annotations to improve modularity of the type checking. The resulting system supports a flexible style of programming XML transformations and provides static guarantees of validity of the generated XML data