I want an XML file to describe hierarchical data where each node is
different. Each node will contain different and varied other nodes.
Describing this in an XML file would be easy but I'm having a problem
with this as related to DTD or XSD.

What the XSD really needs to do is describe a node, which can contain
other nodes. It could not describe the hierarchy of all the nodes in
the XML file. Is it possible to describe a free-form hierarchy in an
XSD file?

[quoted text, click to view]

Sure. Read "5.5 Any Element, Any Attribute" in XML Schema Primer -
http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-0/#any

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Oleg Tkachenko
XML Insider