Summary

This chapter ends our exploration through the exciting techniques now available for accessing data under the .NET Framework. Over the previous four chapters, we've examined the main objects used for both relational data and XML document access, seen how to program with them, and how these two traditionally opposing data-handling technologies are now integrated together.

This chapter concentrated on the ways you can work with objects drawn mainly from the System.Xml namespaces “ in particular, we saw how to read, write, validate, and edit XML documents using a variety of methods . We also explored the way that integration between XML and relational data is achieved through the XmlDataDocument and DataSet objects.

Then, after looking at some of the options available for creating and editing XML documents, we finished up with a more detailed look at the capabilities of the XslTransform object. This object makes it easy to perform server-side XSL and XSLT transformations using stylesheets.

Although we couldn't cover all the topics of XML handling in .NET, you should now be familiar with the basics, the objects that are available, and how they can be used within your applications. To summarize, in this chapter we introduced:

• Accessing relational data as XML and vice versa.

• Synchronization between an XML document and the DataSet object.

• Validating XML documents using a schema.

• Creating and editing XML documents in a range of different ways.

• Some alternatives available when transforming XML using stylesheets.

We now leave data management, and in the next two chapters we'll discuss how to configure ASP.NET applications.