iLingo uses the [W3C XML Schema Working Draft of 6-May-1999]. Although there have been later drafts, we have been reluctant to move forward until a new syntax stabilizes. In addition, we have been conservative in our use of XML Schema refinement/archetypes because they have been in flux.
With the recent drafts and the promise of a proposed recommendation, we will move iLingo forward in the near future. This will allow us to take advantage for more schema constructs and, thus, make iLingo more usable as a basis for XML in the insurance supply chain.
In many ways, the current iLingo represents three general uses of XML Schemas:
Given that we cannot guarantee that an XML schema processor exists at all points in the supply chain, we have provided XML DTDs that are generated from the XML schemas. These DTDs allow a document that conforms to the schema to syntactically parse and provide a certain level of validation. Although this validation cannot check all datatypes, it does provide the structural checking of content models and the verification of required attributes.