ADO.NET 3.5 Cookbook, 2nd Edition

6.7. Serializing Data

Problem

You need to serialize the contents of a DataSet so that you can store the data on a disk or transfer it across a network.

Solution

You can serialize a DataSet or DataTable into XML, binary, or SOAP formats and save the serialized DataSet to a stream (such as a file or network stream).

The solution creates a DataSet containing the Production.Product and Production. ProductInventory tables from AdventureWorks and a relation between the two tables. A file stream is created and the DataSet is serialized to XML, SOAP, and binary formats.

You need to add references to the System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Soap assembly to build the solution.

The C# code in Program.cs in the project SerializeData is shown in Example 6-7.

Example 6-7. File: Program.cs for SerializeData solution

using System;
using System.Data;
using System.Data.SqlClient;
// Namespaces used for serialization
using System.IO;
using System.Xml.Serialization;
using System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Soap;
using System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary;

namespace SerializeData
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            string fileName = @"..\..\..\SerializedDataSet";
            Stream stream;

            string sqlConnectString = "Data Source=(local);" +
                "Integrated security=SSPI;Initial Catalog=AdventureWorks;";

            string sqlSelect = "SELECT * FROM Production.Product;" +
                "SELECT * FROM Production.ProductInventory";

            DataSet ds = new DataSet( ); SqlDataAdapter da; // Fill the Header table in the DataSet ...