XML in Visual Studio
Visual Studio .NET 2003
Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language that provides a format for describing data. This facilitates more precise declarations of content and more meaningful search results across multiple platforms. In addition, XML enables the separation of presentation from data. For example, in HTML you use tags to tell the browser to display data as bold or italic; in XML you use tags only to describe data, such as city name, temperature, and barometric pressure. In XML you use style sheets such as Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) and cascading style sheets (CSS) to present the data in a browser. XML separates the data from the presentation and the process, enabling you to display and process the data as you wish, by applying different style sheets and applications.
XML is a subset of SGML that is optimized for delivery over the Web. It is defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). This standardization ensures that structured data will be uniform and independent of applications or vendors.
XML is at the core of many features of Visual Studio .NET and the .NET Framework. The topic list below shows some of the places you can find information about XML as it relates to various feature areas, including data, XML Web services, Web Forms, and reference materials.
Data and XML
- XML Schemas and Data
- Introduces a section on manipulating XML data and XML Schemas with Visual Basic and C#.
- XML Technology Backgrounder
- Summarizes essential XML concepts and provides links to additional resources.
- Creating XML Schemas: High-Level Process
- Lists the steps involved in creating XML Schemas.
- Creating XML Schemas and Datasets
- Describes the different ways to create XML Schemas and datasets in the Visual Studio environment.
- Relational Data in XML Schemas
- Describes relational data and how it is represented in XML Schemas and XML data.
- XML Files
- Explains how to create, edit, and validate .xml files in Visual Studio.
- XML Designer
- Provides an introduction to the user interface of the XML Designer, which is used to generate strongly typed ADO.NET datasets and to create and manipulate .xml and .xsd (XML Schema) files.
- XML Walkthroughs
- Presents a list of XML-related step-by-step topics in Visual Basic and Visual C#.
XML Web Services
- XML Web Services Overview
- Provides a brief introduction to XML Web services.
- XML Web Services Infrastructure
- Describes the discovery, description, and wire format infrastructures that make XML Web services possible, including a brief description of the role XML plays in making calls to and returning data from XML Web services.
- XML Web Service Discovery
- Explains how discovery files, which are XML-based, allow users to interact with published XML Web services.
- XML Web Service Description
- Introduces the service description page, which is XML-based and provides a means of locating information about XML Web services.
- XML Web Service Scenarios
- Explains several business-case scenarios in which XML Web services can be useful, and gives details on how XML and BizTalk help accomplish scenario goals.
- XML Web Services Walkthroughs
- Presents a list of common scenarios related to XML Web services and provides links to step-by-step topics for them.
Documenting C# Code with XML
- XML Documentation
- Describes how to document C# code using XML and includes links to sample files and further reading.
XML Web Control
- XML Web Server Control
- Provides links to topics about using XML data in this control.
- Xml Class
- Provides reference information about the XML control and links to information about the class's members.
Web Forms Custom Controls and XML
- Rendering an ASP.NET Server Control
- Explains how Web Forms controls can render XML, as well as other types of output.
XML Resource Naming
- XML Resources
- Presents resource naming conventions for XML files in your assemblies.
Enterprise Templates and XML
- Getting Started With Enterprise Templates in Distributed Applications
- Provides information about Enterprise Templates, which use Template Description Language (TDL), an implementation of XML.
.NET Framework and XML
- Employing XML in the .NET Framework
- Provides an introduction to .NET Framework XML features, with links to major sections of the .NET Framework documentation in which you can find more information.
- XML Document Object Model (DOM)
- Describes how the XmlDocument and its associated classes conform to the W3C Document Object Model (Core) Level 1 and Level 2 namespace support specifications.
- Reading XML Data using XmlReader
- Describes how the XmlReader provides noncached, forward only, read-only access to XML data over an XML stream.
- Writing XML with the XmlWriter
- Describes how the XmlWriter provides noncached, forward only, way of generating XML streams and helps you build XML documents that conform to the W3C standard.
- XSLT Transformations with the XslTransform Class
- Describes how the XslTransform class implements the XSLT 1.0 recommendation to transform one XML document into another document, and supports compiled scripting with Visual Basic, C#, and JScript.
- XSLT Transformations with the XslTransform Class
- Describes how the XslTransform class implements the XSLT 1.0 recommendation to transform one XML document into another document, and supports compiled scripting with Visual Basic, C#, and JScript.
- XPathNavigator in the .NET Framework
- Explains that XPath allows you to query a data store for some node or set of nodes. The XPathNavigator is the class that provides the methods required to implement XPath queries over any data store and is based upon the Data Model described in the XML Path Language (XPath) specification at the W3C Web site (http://www.w3.org).
- XML Schema Object Model (SOM)
- Describes the classes used for creating and manipulating XML Schemas, by providing an XmlSchema class to load and edit a schema.
- Validation of XML with Schemas
- Describes the document type definition (DTD), XML-Data Reduced (XDR) schema, and XML Schema (XSD) validation available in the .NET Framework.
- XML Integration with Relational Data and ADO.NET
- Describes how the .NET Framework enables real-time, synchronous access to both the relational and hierarchical representations of data through the DataSet object and the XmlDataDocument object.
- Resolve External XML Resources Named by a URI
- Explains that the XmlResolver is an abstract class that resolves external XML resources named by a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI).
- Encode and Decode XML Element and Attribute Names and ID Values
- Describes how the XmlConvert class performs XML name encoding and decoding of XML data.
- Conversion of XML Data Types
- Describes how the XmlConvert class performs strongly typed conversion of XML data.
- Namespaces in an XML Document
- Describes how the XmlNamespaceManager class is created and used whenever namespaces are needed, holding the prefix and the namespace it represents.
- XML Schema Reference (XSD)
- Describes XSD elements and data types and presents syntax information for each.
- System.Xml Namespace
- Describes the classes and other elements that make up the System.XML namespace and provides links to more detailed information on each item.
- System.Xml.Serialization Namespace
- Describes the classes and other elements that make up the System.XML.Serialization namespace and provides links to more detailed information on each item.
MSDN Online and XML
- XML Developer Center (http://msdn.Microsoft.com/xml)
- Provides the latest documentation, technical information, downloads, newsgroups, and other resources for XML developers.
