Introduction

The .NET Framework leverages XML heavily. XML is steadily growing and has gone beyond being the latest buzzword. It allows for interoperability of passing data between disparate systems on different platforms and Microsoft has created a number of enterprise servers that support XML, such as their Biztalk server and even SQL Server 2000 has XML functionality built in. As industries accept standards based on XML, its use will spread to all phases of enterprise solutions. XML is a self-describing data format and many tools are already available to automatically create the schemas and documents. In this chapter, we discuss one of these tools, the XML Schema Definition tool.

The ADO.NET architecture uses XML as its native data format. ADO.NET is different from ADO 2.x. ADO.NET is filled with XML functionality, including XML Document objects. Here we discuss working with data when connected to the data source and when disconnected. You should already be familiar with working with disconnected data from previous versions of ADO. This functionality is extended using XML and will allow for better use of data in Web pages without a constant connection to a remote database server. ADO.NET has the concept of a data provider, which is similar to an OLE DB provider in ADO. ADO.NET currently has a built-in data provider for SQL Server. You gain significant performance benefits from a built-in provider.

We also discuss remoting in .NET. Remoting allows objects or components to communicate across networks or the Internet and takes...