Understand schema structure schema-structure

The basic structure of a schema is described below.

Data schemas data-schema

For an <srcschema>, the structure is as follows:

<srcSchema>
    <enumeration>
        ...          //definition of enumerations
    </enumeration>

    <element>         //definition of the root <element>    (mandatory)

        <compute-string/>  //definition of a compute-string
        <dbindex>
            ...        //definition of indexes
        </dbindex>
        <key>
            ...        //definition of keys
        </key>
        <sysFilter>
            ...           //definition of filters
        </sysFilter>
        <attribute>
            ...             //definition of fields
        </attribute>

            <element>           //definition of sub-<element>
                  <attribute>           //(collection, links or XML)
                  ...                         //and additional fields
                  </attribute>
                ...
            </element>

    </element>

        <methods>                 //definition of SOAP methods
            <method>
                ...
            </method>
            ...
    </methods>

</srcSchema>

The XML document of a data schema must contain the <srcschema> root element with the name and namespace attributes to populate the schema name and its namespace.

<srcSchema name="schema_name" namespace="namespace">
...
</srcSchema>

Let us use the following XML content to illustrate the structure of a data schema:

<recipient email="John.doe@aol.com" created="2009/03/12" gender="1">
  <location city="London"/>
</recipient>

With its corresponding data schema:

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

Description description

The entry point of the schema is its main element. It is easy to identify because it has the same name as the schema, and it should be the child of the root element. The description of the content begins with this element.

In our example, the main element is represented by the following line:

<element name="recipient">

The <attribute> and <element> elements which follow the main element are used to define the locations and names of the data items in the XML structure.

In our sample schema, these are:

<attribute name="email"/>
<attribute name="created"/>
<attribute name="gender"/>
<element name="location">
  <attribute name="city"/>
</element>

The following rules apply:

Data types data-types

The data type is entered via the type attribute in the <attribute> and <element> elements.

A detailed list is available in the description of the <attribute> element and the <element> element.

When this attribute is not populated, string is the default data type unless the element contains child elements. If it does, it is used only to structure the elements hierarchically (<location> element in our example).

The following data types are supported in schemas:

Here is our example schema with the types entered:

<srcSchema name="recipient" namespace="cus">
  <element name="recipient">
    <attribute name="email" type="string" length="80"/>
    <attribute name="created" type="datetime"/>
    <attribute name="gender" type="byte"/>
    <element name="location">
      <attribute name="city" type="string" length="50"/>
   </element>
  </element>
</srcSchema>

Mapping the types of Adobe Campaign/DBMS data mapping-the-types-of-adobe-campaign-dbms-data

The table below lists the mappings for the types of data generated by Adobe Campaign for the different database management systems.

Properties properties

The <elements> and <attributes> elements of the data schema can be enriched with various properties. You can populate a label in order to describe the current element.

Labels and descriptions labels-and-descriptions

Default values default-values

Use the default property to define an expression returning a default value on content creation.

The value must be an expression compliant with XPath language. For more on this, refer to Referencing with XPath.

Example:

To link a default value to a field, you can use the <default> or <sqldefault> field.

<default> : allows you to pre-fill the field with a default value when creating entities. The value will not be a default SQL value.

<sqldefault> : allows you have an added value when creating a field. This value appears as an SQL result. During a schema update, only the new records will be impacted by this value.

Enumerations enumerations

Open enumeration free-enumeration

The userEnum property lets you define an open enumeration to store and display the values entered via this field.

The syntax is as follows:

userEnum="name of enumeration"

These values are shown in a drop-down list from the input form:

Set enumeration set-enumeration

The enum property lets you define a fixed enumeration used when the list of possible values is known in advance.

The enum attribute refers to the definition of an enumeration class populated in the schema outside the main element.

Enumerations allow the user to select a value from a drop-down list instead of entering the value in a regular input field:

Example of an enumeration declaration in the data schema:

<enumeration name="gender" basetype="byte" default="0">
  <value name="unknown" label="Not specified" value="0"/>
  <value name="male" label="male" value="1"/>
  <value name="female" label="female" value="2"/>
</enumeration>

An enumeration is declared outside the main element via the <enumeration> element.

The enumeration properties are as follows:

The enumeration values are declared in the <value> element with the following attributes:

dbenum enumeration dbenum-enumeration

*The dbenum property lets you define an enumeration whose properties are similar to those of the enum property.

However, the name attribute does not store the value internally, it stores a code which lets you extend the concerned tables without modifying their schema.

This enumeration is used for specifying the nature of campaigns, for example.

Example example

Here is our example schema with the properties filled in:

<srcSchema name="recipient" namespace="cus">
  <enumeration name="gender" basetype="byte">
    <value name="unknown" label="Not specified" value="0"/>
    <value name="male" label="male" value="1"/>
    <value name="female" label="female" value="2"/>
  </enumeration>

  <element name="recipient">
    <attribute name="email" type="string" length="80" label="Email" desc="Email of recipient"/>
    <attribute name="created" type="datetime" label="Date of creation" default="GetDate()"/>
    <attribute name="gender" type="byte" label="gender" enum="gender"/>
    <element name="location" label="Location">
      <attribute name="city" type="string" length="50" label="City" userEnum="city"/>
   </element>
  </element>
</srcSchema>

Collections collections

A collection is a list of elements with the same name and the same hierarchical level.

The unbound attribute with the value “true” lets you populate a collection element.

Example: definition of the <group> collection element in the schema.

<element name="group" unbound="true" label="List of groups">
  <attribute name="label" type="string" label="Label"/>
</element>

With projection of the XML content:

<group label="Group1"/>
<group label="Group2"/>

Referencing with XPath referencing-with-xpath

The XPath language is used in Adobe Campaign to reference an element or attribute belonging to a data schema.

XPath is a syntax that lets you locate a node in the tree of an XML document.

Elements are designated by their name, and attributes are designated by the name preceded by the character “@”.

Example:

It is also possible to define complex expressions, such as the following arithmetic operations:

High-level functions have been added to the expressions in order to enrich the potential of this language.

You can access the list of available functions via any expression editor in the Adobe Campaign client console:

Example:

Building a string via the compute string building-a-string-via-the-compute-string

A Compute string is an XPath expression used to construct a string representing a record in a table associated with the schema. Compute string is mainly used in the graphical interface to display the label of a selected record.

The Compute string is defined via the <compute-string> element under the main element of the data schema. An expr attribute contains an XPath expression to calculate the display.

Example: compute string of the recipient table.

<srcSchema name="recipient" namespace="nms">
  <element name="recipient">
    <compute-string expr="@lastName + ' ' + @firstName +' (' + @email + ')' "/>
    ...
  </element>
</srcSchema>

Result of the computed string for a recipient: Doe John (john.doe@aol.com)

Learn more

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