ASP.NET 2.0 Illustrated

7. Working with XML

We looked at a variety of topics relating to data and databases in Chapters 3, 4, and 5, but these aren’t the only sources of data in modern applications. XML has increasingly become an important data format, not only for the storage of data, but also for the transfer of data. It is text-based, easily readable by both humans and machines, and provides a way for data to be validated. Because of this, XML has become the de facto standard in Web Services and the basis for real standards that define Web Service interoperability.

In this chapter, we’re going to look at XML and its use within ASP.NET pages. We will not be covering the details of working with and creating XML documents using some of the explicit XML classes, because ...