Conclusion

So far, we’ve covered the basics of XML readers. By now, you should know how to parse an XML document irrespective of its physical location and storage medium. You know how to move between nodes, how to skip unneeded nodes, and how to read contents and attributes. In short, you have gotten the gist of XML readers.

The reader is a general concept that crosses the whole spectrum of .NET Framework functionalities and applies to XML as well as databases, files, and network protocols. You can also create custom XML readers to process non-XML data structures such as CSV files.

We’ve only scratched the surface of this topic—there’s a lot more to be done. For example, we haven’t yet looked at validation, which is the topic of Chapter 3.

Further Reading

An article that summarizes in a few pages the essence of XML readers and writers was written for the January 2001 issue of MSDN Magazine. Although based on a beta version of .NET, it is still of significant value and can be found at http://www.msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/01/01/xml/xml.asp. Fresh, up-to-date, and handy information about XML in the .NET world (and other topics) can be found monthly in the “Extreme XML” column on MSDN Online.

If you need to know more about ADO.NET and its integration with XML, you can check out my book Building Web Solutions with ASP.NET and ADO.NET (Microsoft Press, 2002) or David Sceppa’s book Microsoft ADO.NET (Core Reference) (Microsoft Press, 2002).

XML extensions for SQL Server 2000 are described in detail in Chapter 2.

Finally, for a very informative article about the development of XML custom readers, see “Implementing XmlReader Classes for Non-XML Data Structures and Formats,” available on MSDN at http://www.msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dndotnet/html/Custxmlread.asp.