Visual Basic® .NET Power Coding

Serializing a DataSet

ADO.NET is captured internally as XML. The reason for this has to do with XML being (1) self-describing, (2) an open standard, and (3) captured as text, which is easily transportable over networks like the Internet.

Because ADO.NET is stored as XML it becomes easy to send DataSets—ADO.NET objects—over the Internet, persist them in an external file, or serialize them for purposes like caching. For example, since a DataSet is serializable, it can be stored in the session cache in ASP.NET Web applications. In fact, a DataSet can be cached using either of the in-process caching mechanisms or the two out-of-process caching mechanisms. (The out-of-process session caching mechanisms are aspnet_state.exe and SQL Server.)

Serialization ...