Chapter 12: XML in a Managed Environment

A Happy Trio: .NET, Data, and XML

Before I begin this chapter's discussion, I need to point out a few things about this chapter and the topic of XML. In this chapter, I will not mention to you that XML is an acronym for Extensible Markup Language. You already know that. Additionally, I will not take the time to provide any emphasis on how the entire .NET platform leverages the XML technology. That point was clearly stated in Chapter 2 and again in Chapter 4.

To continue, you will not see any details on the basic XML terminology in this chapter. This is only because you have already acquainted yourself with terms such as "documents," "elements," "attributes," and "Schema" while digesting the XML material presented in one of the prerequisite chapters ( specifically , Chapter 4 in the section "XML Learning Kick Start"). On the same note, it is only right that I do not spend any time reintroducing the XML- related query and transformation technologies (i.e., XSL, XSLT, XPath, and XQuery) in this chapter. You already learned about these technologies in the section "XSL, XSLT, XPath, and XQuery" in Chapter 4.

Note  

Please pardon me for assuming that you have taken advantage of the references provided at the end of Chapter 4 in the "To Learn More" section to further familiarize yourself with these topics. As you progress through this chapter, you will occasionally seek out more details and choose to leverage the additional groupings of informative references that are provided at the end of this chapter in the "To Learn More" section.

In this chapter, I see no need to rehash each mainframe analogy presented earlier in Chapter 4. Besides, I am sure that you recall (from that earlier chapter) the mainframe analogy that suggested that XML was the modern-day version of the legacy Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) technology. Certainly, you now understand that both XML and EDI both serve as approaches to data packaging and data description, so it would simply be redundant and wasteful to elaborate on that point in this chapter.

On the other hand, in this chapter, I will discuss how XML and the .NET Dataset (ADO.NET) are supported in unison . From there, I will review the System.Xml namespace and provide an overview of several managed objects that directly support reading and writing XML and XML schemas. I will conclude the chapter by stretching beyond the System.Xml namespace to introduce the "other" .NET namespaces that are available for XML support. I am sure that you will find that the XML topics that are included in this chapter will help move your XML expertise several .NET retraining steps forward.