Are there problems with using the same name for an XML element and attribute?

Question

Can I do something like this?

<root>
  <element>
     <child element="foo" />
  </element>
</root>

and like this?

<root>
  <element element="foo" />
</root>

Are there any drawbacks?

Answer 1

Technically, there is nothing preventing you to do that in XML. Nor at the XML Schema, XQuery or XSLT levels. Two aspects to take into account though:

• what's the semantics of this? Is it really what you want, does it really make sense?
• is it possible that one of the tools you will use will have some limitations in that regard? (none that I know of, but who knows, maybe one of those Java or C# "XML binding tools" that generate classes and fields based on the element and attribute names...)