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Significant XML support has been added to Access, both in the core product and in data access pages. XML extends HTML to deal with structured data from many applications and allows the creation of custom data formats for special situations. Some of the new features are described briefly in this section.
You can create XML data or schema documents from Jet or SQL Server structures and data, or you can use XML data or schema documents to import (either programmatically or through the export user interface) data or structure into either SQL Server or Jet.
The Import dialog box (choose File, Get External Data, Import) now provides an XML Documents selection, which allows you to import schema and data documents into either SQL Server or Jet. Figure 1-13 shows the XML Documents selection.
Figure 1-13. You can import an XML document into either SQL Server or Jet.
The Access table/query/report/form export feature (choose File, Export with a table, query, report, or form selected) now includes an XML Documents Save As Type selection, as shown in Figure 1-14.
Figure 1-14. You can export an Access database object to an XML document.
With Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL), you can create your own style sheets for formatting XML data. You can create your own XSL data transformations for changing the data document format, and you can also create your own presentation formats and add them to the drop-down lists within the Export and Import dialog boxes by adding a metaheader to your XSL document.