The POM for the xmlBinding sub-module has a parent element that refers to the EmployeeInfo module. Also note that the parent EmployeeInfo module refers to the name of the sub-module in the <modules> element. This relationship essentially instructs Maven to look for the parent POM while processing the xmlBinding POM and for all sub-module POMs specified under the <modules> element while processing the EmployeeInfo POM. This sub-module nesting can continue to any level based on the extent of the hierarchical modularization of concerns.

Comparing the two POMs it's evident that both declare the same Junit dependency and specify the same <version> element artifact. It's common that all sub-modules under the one main parent module get released under one version. In this context, it becomes redundant to declare versions in the sub-modules. Maven comes to rescue in such situations by providing a project inheritance model in which sub-modules can inherit build process state attributes from the parent module - group ID, version, dependencies, and other deployment information. Since the xmlBinding module already declares EmployeeInfo as the parent in the POM, to take advantage of project inheritance we just have to make slight changes to the xmlBinding POM. Essentially removing the version, group, and common dependency information from the POM. Below is the modified POM for xmlBinding:

<project>
    <parent>
       <artifactId>EmployeeInfo</artifactId>
       <groupId>com.somecompany</groupId>
       <version>1.0</version>
    </parent>
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
    <artifactId>xmlBinding</artifactId>
    <name>xmlBinding</name>
</project>

The next step would be to create the XSD and use Castor to generate sources for XML-bound Java classes. Create a new folder in Eclipse called castor under the xmlBinding/src/main directory. Then create the XML schema file employee.xsd under the newly created castor directory. The employee.xsd will contain following schema structure:

<xs:schema version="1.0" xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns="http://schema.somecompany.com/"
targetNamespace="http://schema.mytestcompany.com/" elementFormDefault="qualified" attributeFormDefault="unqualified">
    <xs:element name="employee">
       <xs:complexType>
          <xs:sequence>
             <xs:element name="id" type="xs:string"/>
             <xs:element name="salary" type="xs:string"/>
          </xs:sequence>
          <xs:attribute name="firstName" type="xs:string" use="required"/>
          <xs:attribute name="lastName" type="xs:string" use="required"/>
          <xs:attribute name="department" type="xs:string" use="required"/>
       </xs:complexType>
    </xs:element>
</xs:schema>

Next create an employeeBinding.xml Castor binding file in the xmlBinding/src/main/castor directory with the following binding information:

<cbf:binding xmlns:cbf="http://www.castor.org/SourceGenerator/Binding" defaultBindingType="element">
    <cbf:package>
       <cbf:name>com.somecompany.xmlbinding</cbf:name>
       <cbf:namespace>http://schema.somecompany.com/</cbf:namespace>
    </cbf:package>
</cbf:binding>

Running Ant Tasks
Now it's time to generate Java sources using the Castor binding. There are different ways to do this using Maven. We chose to use a Castor Ant task to generate Java sources to illustrate how Ant tasks can be executed using maven-antrun-plugin. The Maven artifact for the Castor Ant task can be found in the http://repository.codehaus.org repository. We'll use version 1.1 of the castor-codegen-anttask artifact that's under the org.codehaus.castor group. To use this artifact, we must first add the Codehaus repository information in the POM file as follows:

<repositories>
    <repository>
       <snapshots>
          <enabled>false</enabled>
       </snapshots>
       <id>central</id>
       <name>Maven Central Repository</name>
       <url>http://repo1.maven.org/maven2</url>
    </repository>
    <repository>
       <id>codehaus </id>
       <name>Codehaus Maven Repository</name>
       <url>http://repository.codehaus.org/</url>
    </repository>
</repositories>

• An Introduction to Maven - Part I
• An Introduction to Maven - Part III