Possible change to spec needed., where it describes what happens when maxOccurs is exceeded during unparsing for occursCountKind 'fixed' and 'implicit' (and by implication scalar elements). It currently says it is a processing error. I think it is better to say that the unparser moves on when maxOccurs is reached. This makes the behaviour analogous to parsing, when it does not try to parse beyond maxOccurs and moves on. The current unparser wording is based on the assumption that any next occurrence of the element in the infoset must be an error, but this is not true - the next occurrence could be an occurrence of a same named element later in the schema. An obvious example is: <xs:element name="data" minOccurs="2"maxOccurs="2" dfdl:occursCountKind="fixed" ... /> <xs:element name="stuff" minOccurs="0" dfdl:occursCountKind="implicit" ... /> <xs:element name="data" maxOccurs="2" maxOccurs="2" dfdl:occursCountKind="fixed" ... /> with an infoset where 'stuff' is missing: message_data data - xx1 data - xx2 data - yy1 data - yy2 A more interesting example is this, taken from MIL-STD-2045 schema (my bold comments added): <xsd:sequence dfdl:separator=""> <!-- Element Value1 --> <xsd:choice> <xsd:sequence dfdl:separator=""> <xsd:group ref="FPI_true"/> <xsd:element dfdl:length="4" dfdl:lengthKind="explicit" name="Value1" type="xsd:string"/> </xsd:sequence> <xsd:sequence dfdl:separator=""> <xsd:group ref="FPI_false"/> </xsd:sequence> </xsd:choice> <!-- Element Value2 --> <xsd:choice> <xsd:sequence dfdl:separator=""> <xsd:group ref="FPI_true"/> <xsd:element dfdl:length="4" dfdl:lengthKind="explicit" name="Value2" type="xsd:string"/> </xsd:sequence> <xsd:sequence dfdl:separator=""> <xsd:group ref="FPI_false"/> </xsd:sequence> </xsd:choice> <!-- Element Value3 --> <xsd:choice> <xsd:sequence dfdl:separator=""> <xsd:group ref="FPI_true"/> <xsd:element dfdl:length="4" dfdl:lengthKind="explicit" name="Value3" type="xsd:string"/> </xsd:sequence> <xsd:sequence dfdl:separator=""> <xsd:group ref="FPI_false"/> </xsd:sequence> </xsd:choice> </xsd:sequence> ...where the FPI_true and FPI_false elements are defined in their own global groups. <xsd:group name="FPI_true"> <xsd:sequence dfdl:separator=""> <xsd:element default="true" dfdl:length="1" dfdl:lengthKind="explicit" dfdl:textBooleanFalseRep="0" dfdl:textBooleanTrueRep="1" name="FPI_true" type="xsd:boolean"> <xsd:annotation> <xsd:appinfo source="http://www.ogf.org/dfdl/"> <dfdl:discriminator>{. eq fn:true()}</dfdl:discriminator> </xsd:appinfo> </xsd:annotation> </xsd:element> </xsd:sequence> </xsd:group> <xsd:group name="FPI_false"> <xsd:sequence dfdl:separator=""> <xsd:element default="false" dfdl:length="1" dfdl:lengthKind="explicit" dfdl:textBooleanFalseRep="0" dfdl:textBooleanTrueRep="1" name="FPI_false" type="xsd:boolean"> </xsd:element> </xsd:sequence> </xsd:group> If the infoset looked like the following an error would be given, whereas it is valid because the second FPI_false is for Value2: message_prefixedOccurs FPI_false - false FPI_false - false FPI_true - true Value3 - 9999 Regards Steve Hanson Architect, IBM DFDL Co-Chair, OGF DFDL Working Group IBM SWG, Hursley, UK smh@uk.ibm.com tel:+44-1962-815848 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