| By now, you should have a strong grasp of data access with ASP.NET. You know how to access and display data, as well as how to modify it with ADO.NET several different ways, in fact. However, any discussion of databases and the Internet isn't complete without mentioning the Extensible Markup Language, or XML. XML is the new universal language for representing data on the Web. It has received a lot of attention because it eliminates many of the problems typically associated with data access and distribution, such as security, understandability, readability, and data conversions. ASP.NET and the .NET Framework were designed with a strong focus on XML, which not only increases their strengths but makes them simpler to use. You'll spend today learning about XML and its place in the ASP.NET framework, with plenty of discussion on reading, writing, and converting XML. Today's lesson will cover the following: What is XML? How to read, write, and validate XML with the XmlTextReader and XmlTextWriter objects How to use the XML Document Object Model How the XML .NET Framework works with relational data |
