Chapter 7: Working With XML Data

Microsoft Exam Objectives Covered In This Chapter:

• Create and manipulate DataSets.

  • Manipulate a DataSet schema.

• Access and manipulate XML data.

  • Access an XML file by using the Document Object Model (DOM) and an XmlReader.

  • Transform DataSet data into XML data.

  • Use XPath to query XML data.

  • Generate and use an XSD schema.

  • Write a SQL statement that retrieves XML data from a SQL Server database.

  • Update a SQL Server database by using XML.

  • Validate an XML document.

Chapter 5, “Working with the .NET Data Providers,” and Chapter 6, “Working with the DataSet,” examined the ADO.NET System.Data classes in detail. This chapter begins with a discussion of the XML processing capabilities of the ADO.NET DataSet and then moves on to the System.Xmlnamespace and the many other classes that the .NET Framework provides to work with XML data.

As you will see in this chapter, the .NET Framework classes make it easy to generate XML data files and schemas. This chapter covers the basics of the XML format and how schemas can be used to define a specific XML format. You will look at the methods provided by ADO.NET to work with XML data. You will also look at classes in the System.XML namespace and learn about using them to work with the XML Document Object Model (DOM), XML Schema Definition language validation, and Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) and XSL Transformations (XSLT), and to search for data with XPath. This chapter concludes with a look at how to return XML data from SQL Server 2000 queries and how to update a database with XML data.