Leveraging XML in Visual Studio .NET

Chapter 17

Leveraging XML in Visual Studio .NET

IN THIS CHAPTER

• The .NET Strategy

• ADO.NET

• The System.Xml Namespace

With the advent of the personal computer and the success of companies such as Microsoft, we saw a fundamental shift in computing from mainframes to smaller personal computers. Rather than having the software reside in one location, it was installed on each machine that needed to run it. Recently, however, with the new push toward distributed environ-ments, we’re seeing another shift. Applications are no longer constrained to being installed on every machine that needs to run them. In fact, with the Internet, the ultimate distributed environment, we’re finding more and more applications taking advantage of distributed computing by having one global location from which to execute functionality.

Until now, Web development output has consisted of string concatenation to create strings that would then be returned to the user. For those of us who are used to working in object-oriented programming languages, this involved a huge shift in thinking. No longer could we visually development our forms, buttons, and controls. We had to con-struct a series of classes that created string output. The major drawback to this approach is that you have to remember two styles of programming: one for the distributed applica-tions and one for nondistributed applications. Now, with the introduction of Visual Studio

.NET, Microsoft promises to bridge that gap in such a way that one style will suffice for both. In this chapter, we’ll cover

   Some basics on ADO.NET data providers

   Some basics on the DataSet class

   Some basics on the DataTable class

   Some basics on the DataRelation class

   Typed data sets

   Loading a data set from XML

   Writing XML from a data set