Introduction

The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is the latest offering in the world of data access. Microsoft has been actively supporting this language since its conception. XML provides a universal way for exchanging information between organizations. Its structure makes it perfect for online applications and working with data residing on the local or remote data sources.

Like Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), XML is a tag-based markup language. Many other technologies, such as browsers, JavaScript, VBScript, Dynamic HTML (DHTML), and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), were developed to support the HTML documents. Similarly, XML cannot be singled out as a stand-alone technology. It is actually a family of a growing set of technologies and frameworks. The major members of this family are XML parsers, Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT), XPath, XLink, Simple API for XML (SAX), Schema Generators, and Document Object Model (DOM), just to name a few.

Please take note that ADO.NET is not coded in XML but that ADO.NET revolves around XML. Some readers may confuse the terms. Microsoft has integrated the XML technology in its .NET Framework rather tightly. The core foundation of the entire ADO.NET architecture is built upon XML. The ADO.NET itself is not coded in XML; however, it provides the facilities to apply various existing and emerging XML technologies to manipulate data and information. The System.XML namespace offers perhaps the richest collection of classes for generating, transmitting, processing, and storing information via XML. In this chapter, we will first have a brief introduction to the...