Missing Microsoft XML schema mystery

Question

I downloaded the XML schema's for Office 2003 from Microsoft's download site here so I can validate Excel documents that people upload to our app. Turns out that they don't work. I receive errors where it can't resolve the type like this:

org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: src-resolve: Cannot resolve the name 'udcxf:File' 
to a(n) 'element declaration' component.

I've traced this error to the fact that the udc.xsd file which makes a namespace reference to http://schemas.microsoft.com/data/udc/xmlfile which is not valid. When you pull that url up there is nothing served up, so it makes sense that the XML validator is unable to resolve these references.

My question is did Microsoft change the location of their schemas? If so where are they now? Is this format dead?

[edit]

It seems all of the referenced URI's that their office 2003 xsd's point to, that are on the host schemas.microsoft.com all just yield 404s.

Answer 1

IIRC, there is a patent issue and they removed the xml office format for the moment.