Jun, This looks like some aspect of XSD that I don't understand yet (XML Schema is like Perl -its too complex to understand more than the subset you work with) variableType and the element ref declare that they have the attribute lazy: <complexType name="variableType"> <attribute name="name" type="NCName" use="required"/> <attribute name="refroot" type="QName" use="optional"/> <attribute name="ref" type="cdl:pathType" use="required"/> <attribute name="lazy" use="optional"/> </complexType> But it is untyped. Does the attribute defined in the base of the schema get picked up (yes, I guess it would), so there is no need to restate type information? If this is so, what is the purpose in declaring the attribute at all? Just as an aide-memoire to users and XML IDEs? -steve