Here's what we say about xsd:any (wildcard support) in DFDL spec. Any Element Wildcard The "any" element wildcard provides support for initiator-tagged data formats. The dfdl:initiatorSeparator property must be defined or it is a schema definition error. The 'processContents' attribute is not allowed in DFDL 1.0 and it's use is a schema definition error. This kind of wildcard is used to absorb content which while syntactically compatible is not logically modeled as elements of the sequence group. These declarations match a triplet of strings. The first is a variable-length string that matches any initiator tag. The second is a fixed value string which must match the initiator-separator property value. The third is a variable-length string that matches any content up until the end of the "element" being matched. The length of data matching an any-element wildcard is specified by the usual length properties: dfdl:lengthKind, dfdl:lengthUnits, dfdl:length, dfdl:terminator. dfdl:initiator is not used by Any Element wildcards and is ignored if specified in scope. We insist on the presence of a known initiator separator to separate initiator from data. We should also allow initiator length, to support models where there is no separator. Exactly one of initiator separator and initiator length must be specified. Initiator length is not a valid DFDL property on any other xsd object. This is supported today by IBM's MRM parser. Regards Steve Hanson Programming Model Architect WebSphere Message Brokers Hursley, UK Internet: smh@uk.ibm.com Phone (+44)/(0) 1962-815848 Unless stated otherwise above: IBM United Kingdom Limited - Registered in England and Wales with number 741598. Registered office: PO Box 41, North Harbour, Portsmouth, Hampshire PO6 3AU