Chapter 27. Introduction to XML

OBJECTIVES

• Learn why you should care about XML

• Learn how to create well-formed XML

• Validate XML using XML Schema

• Use Visual Studio .NET's XML tools to create and modify XML

• Bind a DataGrid to XML data

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past five years, it would be hard to have missed the emergence of Extensible Markup Language (XML) as a standardized format for transporting data. Although there have been other data-transport mechanisms in the past, none has garnered as much support as XML.

Over the next few chapters, you'll be investigating both creating and consuming XML Web Services. In order to understand how and why XML works, you'll need some background on XML and why it's so popular. In this chapter, you'll review the basics of XML, learn how XML is constructed, and learn how to format XML data using an XML grammar, Extensible Stylesheet Language, XSL.