Get started with schemas about-schema-reference

What is a schema what-is-a-schema

This chapter describes how to configure extension schemas in order to extend the conceptual data model of the Adobe Campaign database.

For a better understanding of Campaign built-in tables and their interaction, refer to the Campaign Classic data model.

In Adobe Campaign, the physical and logical structure of the data carried in the application is described in XML. A schema is an XML document associated with a database table. It defines data structure and describes the SQL definition of the table:

It also describes the XML structure used to store data:

Schemas enable you to define an entity in the database. There is a schema for each entity.

The following illustration shows the location of schemas in the Adobe Campaign data system:

Syntax of schemas syntax-of-schemas

The root element of the schema is <srcschema>. It contains the <element> and <attribute> sub-elements.

The first <element> sub-element coincides with the root of the entity.

<srcSchema name="recipient" namespace="cus">
  <element name="recipient">
    <attribute name="lastName"/>
    <attribute name="email"/>
    <element name="location">
      <attribute name="city"/>
   </element>
  </element>
</srcSchema>

The <element> tags define the names of entity elements. <attribute> tags of the schema define the names of the attributes in the <element> tags which they have been linked to.

Identification of a schema identification-of-a-schema

A data schema is identified by its name and its namespace.

A namespace lets you group a set of schemas by area of interest. For example, the cus namespace is used for customer-specific configuration (customers).

The identification key of a schema is a string built using the namespace and the name separated by a colon; for example: cus:recipient.