1.2 Overview

The chapter Writing an XML Schema for JAXB discusses how JAXB represents the various XML Schema language constructs in Java. The examples illustrate how a schema should be written to produce easy-to-use Java code.

Chapters Unmarshalling and Using the Data and Building and Marshalling an XML Document describe how to convert XML document data into a content tree and vice versa.

Customizing discusses the various options for augmenting and modifying schema information, influencing several aspects of the generated Java code.

The chapter JAXB Annotations presents the most important JAXB annotations and examples using them on hand-written Java classes.

The intention of this tutorial is to provide you with examples and guidelines for the essential features of JAXB. Much of what can be done with JAXB is not covered here. Some of these features are:

• The XML Schema generator schemagen, which derives a schema from a set of Java classes.
• The XML Schema compiler xjc may be extended with plugins - obviously an area for experts.
• Some features rely on specific implementations of JAXB. A good place for digging up remarkable tricks are the archives of Kohsuke Kawaguchi's Blog.