The Schematron is an XML structure validation language for making assertion about the presence or absence of patterns in trees. It is a simple and powerful structural schema language. It typically uses XPath to describe patterns. The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a W3C-recommended general-purpose markup language for creating special-purpose markup languages, capable of describing many different kinds of data. ... XPath (XML Path Language) is a terse (non-XML) syntax for addressing portions of an XML document. ...

Schematron can be used as an adjunct to DTDs, RELAX NG or XML Schema. It allows co-occurrence constraints, non-regular constraints, and inter-document constraints. DTD is an initialism that can stand for: Document Type Definition, used in SGML and XML programming (similar to DOCTYPE Document Type Declaration) Delta Tau Delta, a US-based college fraternity Double Talk Detection, a method of detecting (voice) signals from both ends of a telephone line, useful in acoustic... In computing, RELAX NG (REgular LAnguage for XML Next Generation) is a schema language for XML, based on Murata Makotos RELAX and James Clarks TREX. A RELAX NG schema specifies a pattern for the structure and content of an XML document. ... XML Schema, published as a W3C Recommendation in May 2001, is one of several XML schema languages. ...

Its inventor has described Schematron as "a feather duster to reach the parts other schema languages cannot reach". Richard Alan Jelliffe (born 1960), commonly known as Rick Jelliffe is an Australian programmer and standards activist (ISO, W3C, IETF), particularly associated with web standards, markup languages, internationalization and schema languages. ...

Schematron is being standardized to become part of 

ISO/IEC 19757 - Document Schema Definition Languages (DSDL) - Part 3: Rule-based validation - Schematron.

Logo of the International Organization for Standardization The International Organization for Standardization (ISO or iso) is an international standard-setting body composed of representatives from national standards bodies. ... The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) is an international standards organization dealing with electrical, electronic and related technologies. ... Document Schema Definition Languages (DSDL) is a framework within which multiple validation tasks of different types can be applied to an XML document in order to achieve more complete validation results than just the application of a single technology. ...

External links

• ISO Schematron Home Page
• Academia Sinica Computing Centre's Schematron Home Page