Why XmlSchemaSet explicitely sets targetNamespace to chameleon schemas

Question

Hi everybody. I have 2 Xml schemas:

a.xsd:

<xsd:schema xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns="test" targetNamespace="test">
    <xsd:include schemaLocation="b.xsd" />
</xsd:schema>`

b.xsd:

<xsd:schema xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
    <xsd:simpleType name="testType">
        <xsd:restriction base="xsd:string">
            <xsd:enumeration value="test"/>
        </xsd:restriction>
    </xsd:simpleType>
    <xsd:element name="test" type="testType"/>
</xsd:schema>

Second schema does not have targetNamespace and used as a chameleon schema.

I am trying to pre-load these schemas using XmlSchemaSet:

XmlSchemaSet schemaSet = new XmlSchemaSet();
schemaSet.Add(null, @"a.xsd");

foreach (XmlSchema schema in schemaSet.Schemas())  // foreach is used to simplify the example
{
    Console.WriteLine("Target namespace: "schema.TargetNamespace);  // "Target namespace: test"
    XmlSchemaInclude include = (XmlSchemaInclude)schema.Includes[0];
    Console.WriteLine("Include target namespace: " + include.Schema.TargetNamespace); // "Include target namespace: test"
}

But after I do it both schemas have "test" target namespace. I expect instantiated schema objects should be equal to source schemas, but it is not true for schema "b.xsd". Why it behaves so and is there any way to disable such a behavior?

Answer 1

In my view for validation purposes the included schema takes on the target namespace of the including schema and that is reflected in the schema object model.

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