XSDObjectGen.exe vs XSD.exe

Question

Can anyone tell me what is the difference between XSDObjectGen.exe & XSD.exe?

Is there any way to make XSDObjectGen.exe work in dot net 2.0?

Answer 1

Looks like you can use it with VS2005 at least (according to this article, anyway)

Just add it to your External Tools collection of VS2005 under "Tools>>External Tools...".

Set your parameters as the following

• For VB: $(ItemPath) /l:vb /f:$(ItemFileName).vb /c /d /t
• For C#: $(ItemPath) /l:cs /f:$(ItemFileName).vb /c /d /t

It does appear that XSD and XSDObjectGen will yield different classes. In fact, comments in this Rick Strahl article say "they yield very different classes" in the article here.

Answer 2

The difference is:

• The XML Schema Definition Tool (xsd.exe) is part of the Visual Studio SDK and has basic functionality.
• The XSD Sample Code Generator Tool (XSDObjectGen.exe) is a more fully featured tool with more advanced features, and is released separately.

To give you some idea, here is a summary feature list for XSDObjectGen.exe:

• Support for the most popular XML schema constructs
• Enumerator and Collection behavior for repeating elements
• Programming model that matches schema
• Automatic sub-class construction
• Name collision avoidance
• Visual Studio IDE integration
• Special handling logic for DateTime types
• Multipart schema support
• XML namespace serialization
• Optional and Sequence support
• Choice Support
• Substitution group
• MakeSchemaCompliant method
• Non-optional reference-type handling
• WS-I.org basic profile compliance
• Multi-programming language support
• Depth-wise Traversal Events

For more details on these features see the XSDObjectGen.doc documentation file (available in C:\Program Files\XSDObjectGenerator after you install the tool).

Answer 3

At a purely technical level:

XSD.exe uses Arrays
XSDObjectGen takes a tiny step ahead and uses ArrayLists.
XSD2Code leaps ahead with usage of Generics.

If you're using .NET 2.0 and above using XSD2Code is most preferred.

Answer 4

As an alternative, there's Xsd2Code. Some features:

• Generate partial class.
• Support generic and custom collection (List, ObservableCollection, MyCustomCollection).
• Support automatic properties when no special get or set is required.
• Can generate WCF attributes (DataContract/DataMember).
• Support nillable type.
• Mask private field in IDE (use EditorBrowsableState.Never attribute).
• Generate object allocation in constructor.
• Implement INotifyPropertyChanged for enable DataBinding for wpf or Silverlight.
• Improves productivity with visual studio add-in.
• Generate summary documentation from xsd annotation.
• Check if the new and old values int setter are the same before raising property changed event.
• backup options generation in cs or vb header.
• Save and load Xml document into isolated file storage for silverlight app (new in 3.0).
• Generate CS, VB or CPP code.
• Serialize/deserialize object.
• Save into file and load from file.
• Include Xsd2CodeCustomTool.