When adding web reference to a C# project in Visual Studio, VS generates a class named Reference.cs. this class is the C# code of the XSD types of the web service. BizTalk installation includes extensions to visual studio that additionally creates classes for BizTalk artifacts that will be used by the BizTalk messaging engine.
When you create XSD schema - VS will generate cs file with the schema as a CLR object. the naming convention for this file is <schemaName>.xsd.cs
When you add a Web reference to the project - VS will create three classes:
- Reference.map.cs
- Reference.odx.cs
- Reference.xsd.cs
In a future post I'll write about those classes in great details.
The namespace and the CLR class name of the auto-generated classes is depends on some factors:
For web reference:
- The class namespace is the project default namespace (by default it's Visual Studio Project filename ) + dot sign (.) + the name of the web reference.
- The class name is a factor of the WSDL artifact.
For XSD schema:
- The class namespace is the schema-type namespace
- The class name is the schema-type name.
This naming convention is auto-generated and you can't control or change it.
Another thing to know is that for the Compiler perspective, the default namespace for all artifacts in the project is default namespace (by default it's the VS project filename).
All the above leads us to this:
What if the default namespace (the project filename) is equals to the XSD schema-type namespace?
In a regular situation it's all right but in case you adding web reference to the project, VS will generate the namespace for the Reference.odx.cs classes in the form of <ProjName>.<WebRefName> so if the name of the project file is Test.Schemas it will look like: Test.Schemas.<nameOfWebRef>
In the sample below Test.Schemas is a namespace.
When VS generates the XSD schema class it will generate it in the form of <schemaNS>.<schemaName>
in the sample below Test.Schemas is the class namespace and Teat is the class name; explicit: Test.Schemas.Test
When the compiler tries to compile the project it will translate the word 'Test' in namespace of the web reference file Reference.odx.cs as the class that represents the XSD schema-type, because the schema has the same namespace as the project default namespace – by default the VS project name.
This process will cause the following error:
error CS0426: The type name '<Name>' does not exist in the type.
The error means that the XSD generated class 'Test' does not contains member with the name 'Schemas'. this is completely true because 'Test.Schemas' is only a namespace – copied from the project namespace.
To fix the error, all we have to do is to change the schema name or the schema namespace. additionally, we can change the project default-namespace and then import the web reference.
Be aware that to change the web reference namespace you need to remove them and adding them again.
The insights of all of this: if your project default namespace is composed of two words separated by a dot (.) sign:
- Unless you have a web reference in your BizTalk project – you can name the schema namespace just like the VS project file including 'dot' sign, you can also name the schema-type name as the first word in the Project filename.
- If you need to include a web reference in the project change the schema-type namespace to be different from the project namespace. additionally; you can name the schema-type name different from the first word in the project namespace.
