Beginning ASP.NET 3.5 in C# 2008: From Novice to Professional, Second Edition

19.3. The XML Classes

.NET provides a rich set of classes for XML manipulation in several namespaces that start with System.Xml. One of the most confusing aspects of using XML with .NET is deciding which combination of classes you should use. Many of them provide similar functionality in a slightly different way, optimized for specific scenarios or for compatibility with specific standards.

The majority of the examples you'll explore use the types in the core System.Xml namespace. The classes here allow you to read and write XML files, manipulate XML data in memory, and even validate XML documents.

In this chapter, you'll look at the following options for dealing with XML data:

• Reading and writing XML directly, just like you read and write text ...