Beginner's Guide to XML and .NET

Which XML API should I use--System.XML, LINQ to XML, or MSXML? What tools are available in Visual Studio? Also includes links to many articles.

Get under the hood of the XmlResolver class in System.Xml and review how to create your own implementations of XmlResolvers that allow you to retrieve XML documents from alternative data sources.   

Leverage DataSetNavigator to get the flexibility of the XML programming model without converting the entire DataSet into an XmlDataDocument object.

Praj Joshi produces a GUI tool for viewing the results of XPath queries on an XML document.

Use the classes in the System.XML.Schema namespace of the Microsoft .NET Framework to build a tool that generates sample XML documents conforming to a given schema.   

Learn how to use the XmlDiff class in combination with Winforms to build an application that compares two XML files and shows these differences as an HTML document.  

Learn about the XML Editor and the XSLT Debugger in Visual Studio 2005 and later.

Christoph Schittko discusses various techniques for diagnosing common problems that occur when converting XML to objects and vice versa with XML Serialization technology in the .NET Framework.

Learn about XInclude, an emerging W3C standard, and XPointer. Discover a specific implementation of XInclude for the .NET Framework.  

Learn the difference between typed datasets and classes generated by the xsd.exe tool. Extend this process by reusing the infrastructure classes supporting it, staying compatible with the XmlSerializer.   

XmlCsvReader is a sample implementation of an XmlReader that parses tab-delimited .csv files and presents their contents as a stream of XML elements; XmlReader is the Microsoft .NET Framework base class for all managed stream-level XML processing.

Discusses the Microsoft XSD Inference utility, which simplifies the task of writing XML Schema by automatically generating schemas from instance documents. The inferred schema can then be refined with related document instances so that it can be used to describe and validate a whole class of XML documents.

Learn how the .NET Framework's classes and associated tools for manipulating XML data can be woven together to form an impressive array of options for constructing XML processing solutions.

Explains how to use the XML Diff and Patch tool, which compares two XML files and produces an XML output of the differences, by utilizing a typical scenario that readers can apply to their own applications.