Although many programming languages and environments have provided XML support as an add-on, .NET’s support is integrated into the framework more tightly than most. The .NET development team decided to use XML extensively within the framework in order to meet its design goals. Accordingly, they built in XML support from the beginning.
The .NET Framework contains five main assemblies that implement the core XML standards. Table 1-1 lists the five assemblies, along with a description of the functionality contained in each. Each of these assemblies is documented in detail in Chapter 16 through Chapter 20.
Assembly |
Description |
|
Basic XML input and output with |
|
Constraint of XML via XML Schema with
|
|
Serialization to plain XML and SOAP with
|
|
Navigation of XML via XPath with |
|
Transformation of XML documents via XSLT with
|
In addition, the
System.Web.Services
and
System.Data
assemblies contain classes that
interact with the XML assemblies. The XML assemblies used internally
in the .NET Framework are also available for use directly in your
applications.
For example, the
System.Data
assembly handles database operations.
Its DataSet
class provides a mechanism to transmit
database changes using XML. But you can also access the XML generated
by the DataSet
and manipulate it just as you would
any XML file, using classes in the System.Xml
namespace.
Besides the .NET
Framework’s XML assemblies, there are several tools
integrated into Visual Studio .NET and shipped with the .NET
Framework SDK that can make your life easier when dealing with XML.
These tools include xsd.exe
,
wsdl.exe
, and disco.exe
, among others.
There are also some tools shipped by Microsoft and other third parties that provide different ways to access and manipulate XML data. I describe some of them in Chapters 13 and 14.
.NET applications have access to system-
and application-specific configuration files through the
System.Configuration
assembly. The
System.Configuration
assembly and the format of
the XML configuration files, along with some examples of their use,
are documented in Chapter 15.
As you can see, XML is deeply integrated into .NET. One entire layer of the .NET conceptual model shown in Figure 1-1 is devoted to XML. Although it shares the layer with data services, the XML and data assemblies are tightly integrated with each other.
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