Chapter 22. XML
WHAT YOU WILL LEARN IN THIS CHAPTER
How to read and write Extensible Markup Language (XML)
The rules that apply to well-formed XML
How to validate your XML documents against two types of schema: XSD and XDR
How to use XML in your applications
How to use .NET to use XML in your programs
How to search through XML documents using XPath queries
Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a technology that has been receiving great attention for the past few years. XML is not new, and it was certainly not invented by Microsoft for use in the .NET environment, but Microsoft recognized the possibilities of XML early in its development. Because of that you will see it performing a large number of duties in .NET, from describing the configuration of your applications to transporting information between Web services.
XML is a way of storing data in a simple text format, which means that it can be read by nearly any computer. As you've seen in some of the earlier chapters about Web programming, this makes it a perfect format for transferring data over the Internet. It's even not too difficult for humans to read!
From the first versions of Visual Studio .NET it has been obvious that Microsoft is putting quite a lot of effort into developing solutions that use XML. Today most applications in .NET use XML in some form, from .config files for storing configuration details to XAML files used in Windows Presentation Foundations. Even the new document formats introduced with Office 2007 are based on ...
Get Beginning Visual C# 2010 now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
