Essential ADO.NET

Appendix C. Schema Inference Rules

The relational structure, or schema, of a DataSet is made up of tables, columns, constraints, and relations. When loading a DataSet from XML, the schema can be pre-defined, or it can be created, either explicitly or through inference, from the XML being loaded. For more information about loading the schema and contents of a DataSet from XML, see Loading a DataSet from XML and Loading DataSet Schema Information from XML.

If the schema of a DataSet is being created from XML, the preferred method is to explicitly specify the schema using either the XML Schema Definition language (XSD) (as described in Generating DataSet Relational Structure from XSD) or the XML-Data Reduced Language (XDR). If no XSD or XDR schema ...