Microsoft® .NET Kick Start

Integrating Data

Listing 9.2 illustrates how Web services can be used to return complex types marshaled as XML. Apart from the custom serialization approach used earlier, Web services can be used to return DataSets that represent data retrieved from enterprise SQL databases (actually, DataSets can be used to represent nonrelational data as well). DataSets are then automatically serialized into their appropriate XML representation (Figure 9.6). This dataset can then be used by another ASP.NET Web application (by data binding a DataGrid Web server control) or a Windows Form application (by data binding a DataGrid Windows forms control). The data binding capability within the .NET Framework makes Web services a mechanism for distributing pieces ...