Professional XML

Chapter 15. XML and .NET

Microsoft has been working for years to make using XML in the .NET world as easy as possible. You can't help but notice the additional capability and the enhancements to overall XML usage introduced in new each version of the .NET Framework. In fact, Bill Gates highlighted Microsoft's faith in XML in his keynote address at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference 2005 in Los Angeles. He stated that XML is being pushed deeper and deeper into the Windows core each year. If you look around the .NET Framework, you will probably agree.

In addition to a series of namespaces in the .NET Framework that deal with XML and other XML-related technologies, you also find support for XML in Microsoft's products such as Visual Studio 2005, ASP.NET, ADO.NET, SQL Server, BizTalk, and a plethora of others.

This and the following two chapters step away from focusing on a specific XML technology. Instead, they focus on how specific vendors' technologies use XML. This chapter takes a look at XML in the .NET world, while the next few chapters look at XML in the worlds of Java, PHP, and more. You start by looking specifically at the Microsoft's embrace of XML.

The Serialization of XML

The .NET Framework makes it rather simple to serialize an object, such as a class, to XML. This has a lot of value in that you can take any objects you create in the .NET world, serialize them to XML, and then transport this XML over the wire or save it to disk for later retrieval. The serialization ...