Articles filed in category 'XML'

March/April .Finalize() column.

Using Oracle as your database in the .NET environment is relatively simple, except when returning JDBC ResultSets from Java stored procedures. The Microsoft and Oracle .NET data provider drivers allow for easy access to data from SQL queries and PL/SQL stored procedures. There is not, however, a simple interface to return ResultSet data from a Java stored procedure to a .NET client.

Michiel van Otegem demonstrates how to build a simple, portable and highly extensible shopping cart using XML and XSLT: product data and per-user baskets are represented as XML, XSLT templates handle display, adding and updating items, and transformations enable platform- and client-specific rendering. By placing logic in XSLT (server-side for broad compatibility) the system gains cross-platform portability, easy handling of evolving product attributes, and reusable proc...essing for totals, payments and multiple output formats.See More

Jan/Feb 2008 Doc Detective COlumn.

The official release of Microsoft's Web Services Enhancements (WSE) toolkit promises to help developers deal with at least some of the pain and suffering accompanying the emerging Web services' standards.Updated to support the OASIS WS-Security specification and a promising WS-Policy specification, developers will be able to build standards-compliant Web services in less time and with less code.

LINQ to XML, which makes query a first class construct in C# and Visual Basic, is the new XML API in the .NET Framework 3.5. With the introduction of Language Integrated Query (LINQ), Microsoft is introducing LINQ implementations that work over objects, data, and XML. LINQ to XML improves on System.Xml in the .NET Framework 2.0 by being both simpler to use and more efficient. Microsoft developed this new API because the W3C-based DOM API does not integrate well into the LINQ programming model.

In this article, Beth Massi presents a comprehensive approach to building dynamic, flexible search interfaces for distributed web applications using Visual FoxPro, ADO, and XML. She details how to create and manage Search Criteria Resources (SCRs) in the middle tier to handle user-defined queries, supporting both ADO recordsets and XML streams for data exchange. By leveraging object-oriented design patterns, including Search Criteria Managers and Syntax classes, Massi de...monstrates how to generate adaptable SQL queries and integrate client-side XML manipulation, enabling scalable, robust searching mechanisms that enhance user experience in heterogeneous internet environments.See More

In episode #271 of .NET Rocks! (www.dotnetrocks.com) Richard and I spoke with Don Demsak about LINQ to XML. Here’s an excerpt from that interview.

In this article, Markus Egger explores the challenges of Business-To-Business (B2B) communications and presents Microsoft BizTalk Server 2000 as a promising solution. He provides an in-depth overview of BizTalk's routing services, document translation with XML schemas and mapping, and introduces BizTalk Orchestration for automating complex, long-running business processes. Using practical examples, Egger demonstrates how BizTalk Server facilitates interoperability betwee...n diverse partners and streamlines transaction workflows, highlighting its potential to make B2B integration more efficient and accessible for businesses of all sizes.See More

At PDC 2005, Microsoft introduced brand new technology known as LINQ, which stands for “Language Integrated Query.”The feature-set hiding behind this acronym is truly mind-boggling and worthy of a lot of attention. In short, LINQ introduces a query language similar to SQL Server’s T-SQL, in C# and VB.NET. Imagine that you could issue something like a “select * from customers” statement within C# or VB.NET. This sounds somewhat intriguing, but it doesn’t begin to communicate the power of LINQ.

When people think of having to store data for their applications, a database such as SQL Server immediately comes to mind. However, XML files are very handy for storing data without the overhead of a database. Using XML files to cache often-used, but seldom changed data such as US state codes, employee types and other validation tables can avoid network roundtrips and speed up your application. In addition, XML files are great for off-line applications where a user needs... to add, edit and delete data when they can’t connect to a database. See More

As database developers, many of us have had to dip our feet into the wide ocean of XML.It should come as good news that in SQL Server 2005, you can store XML in the database with a new XML datatype. Although this is good news, many developers have been storing XML in the database for some time now. Without implicit support for XML, developers have been shoving XML documents into text fields since XML’s inception.

Web Services is a powerful technology, even in its basic form.However, with .NET, you can easily couple Web Services with .NET's new data services to provide a powerful data delivery mechanism that works over the Web, making it possible to build distributed applications that work easily without a local data store. In this article, Rick describes various ways you can use Web Services and ADO.NET DataSets to pass data between client and server applications to build truly disconnected applications.

In this article, Travis Vandersypen explains how Microsoft SQL Server 2000 introduces native XML support, allowing developers to query data directly in XML format using the `FOR XML` clause with options like AUTO, RAW, and EXPLICIT. He details the configuration steps for enabling XML support via IIS, demonstrates querying data through URL and Template queries, and shows how XSL stylesheets can transform XML output for various presentation needs. Vandersypen emphasizes th...at this built-in XML functionality simplifies data integration for distributed applications by eliminating the need for custom conversion routines, enabling developers to focus more on business logic.See More

Data in XML format will play a significant role for the foreseeable future.Moreover, it's clear that XML and XSL will play a significant role in most, if not all, of my future applications. Why is it, however, that almost everything we read talks about merging XML+XSL on the client side, which requires IE 5 or higher browsers? In this article, Steve shows how to apply XSL transformations on the server to get around this problem.

Visual Basic 9 in Visual Studio 2008 has a new set of language features that allows developers to work with XML in a much more productive way using a new API called LINQ to XML. LINQ stands for Language Integrated Query and it allows you to write queries for things like objects, databases, and XML in a standard way. Visual Basic provides deep support for LINQ to XML through what’s called XML literals and XML axis properties. These features allow you to use a familiar, co...nvenient syntax for working with XML in your Visual Basic code. LINQ to XML is a new, in-memory XML programming API specifically designed to leverage the LINQ framework. Even though you can call the LINQ APIs directly, only Visual Basic allows you to declare XML literals and directly access XML axis properties. This article will help you master these new features for working with XML in Visual Basic.See More

Jonathan Goodyear (the Angry Coder) discusses MVPs and ASP.NET.

Data is the blood in your system; it sits in its comfortable home of a database, and camps out in the tent of XML, but it deserves to be worked with in a reliable and consistent manner.But why should only data-related operations be reliable? Shouldn’t you want to write reliable code for your other operations? The introduction of System.Transactions in .NET 2.0 brings a paradigm shift of how you will write reliable transactional code on the Windows platform. This article ...dives deep in the depths of how System.Transactions works, and how you can use it to your advantage. You will also see how you can leverage existing System.Transactions integration within ADO.NET, and why you need to really understand what is under the magic carpet.See More

In our service-oriented world, users need the same experience on any device, whether mobile phone, office PC, or Internet café. Moreover, they want the same experience any time they access applications, offline or online. For developers, this means tackling multi-tier, distributed, and concurrent programming. LINQ 1.0 radically simplified multi-tier programming with unified query and deep XML support. TESLA is a broad engineering program by the authors to extend the succ...ess of LINQ with external relationships, reshaping combinators, assisted tier-splitting, and join patterns.See More

If you want to develop code that’s flexible, extensible, maintainable, and testable, you’ll want to read Paul’s article about some basic things to keep in mind before you start.

Along with an easy site with which you can access your account, there are many really cool Twitter clients out there. This is thanks to an exposed API that you can use to access all of Twitter’s features. The great thing is that this API uses a technology that WCF has embraced completely; I’m talking about REST. Though you can certainly use straight network programming to access and update your Twitter account, why not use the technology that Microsoft has put all their ...eggs into as far as communications programming is concerned? Twitter is, after all, all about communicating, right?See More

Chris explores how voice-enabled home assistant devices, like Amazon Echo and Google Home, speak to you and how they learn to understand your particular speech patterns.

In this first installment, Rick Strahl argues that XML is a practical, platform‑independent messaging and data‑representation standard for distributed applications—enabling hierarchical, multi‑document payloads, version‑tolerant object persistence, and broad client interoperability—while also candidly noting performance, size, parsing and binary‑data drawbacks; he introduces Visual FoxPro/COM tools (wwXML) to simplify XML persistence and conversion, and previews a follow...‑up with concrete implementation patterns and a reusable XML conversion class.See More

Rick Strahl argues that XML can serve as a practical, low-effort backbone for distributed application messaging, enabling seamless data and object transfer between client and server with minimal code. He showcases a free Visual FoxPro tool, wwXML, to convert tables and nested objects to and from XML, generate hierarchical XML from complex objects, and move data over HTTP (including POST). By decoupling client and server through XML, supporting DTDs, and enabling offline/...online synchronization, Strahl demonstrates a concrete path to interoperable, cross-platform data exchange and remote object persistence.See More

Ken Getz Jan/Feb 08 FInalize article.

One of Microsoft Office 2003's most significant new features is the integration of XML technology.The XML features of Word 2003 are a great way to ensure that you can always get to the information stored within documents. This article focuses on taking advantage of Word 2003's XML features from within your applications.

XAML properties don’t always behave as you think they might. Markus explains how they work and shows you some nifty ways to use these powerful tools.

Jon Newell advocates using XML as the data transport to bind server data to HTML in IE5+ client applications, separating content from presentation to enable multi‑platform reach and better scalability. By embedding XML data islands in server responses and using nonstandard yet IE‑friendly attributes (XMLTABLE, XMLFIELD) on form elements, data is bound on the client via a lightweight JavaScript library (binddata), with an optional sync back to XML islands and easy posting... back to the server. This approach promotes true N‑Tier separation and interoperability across fat, thin, and mobile clients.See More

Dan Wahlin demonstrates how to efficiently parse XML and load it into a database using .NET's XmlTextReader by walking through a SQLGenerator class that streams tokens from a customers.xml file, extracts element text and attributes, builds INSERT statements for Northwind's Customers table (including handling multiple records and errors), and emphasizes XmlTextReader's low-memory, high-performance streaming advantage for large XML documents.

XML is everywhere from XML Web Services to databases to config files to Office documents. This article will show you tooling support offered in Visual Studio 2008 that will make working with XML easier. It will cover editing XML files, working with XML schemas, debugging XSLT style sheets and extending Visual Studio by writing your own custom XML Designers.

In this article Travis Vandersypen explains how SQL Server 2000's XML UpdateGrams provide a cleaner, transactional way to insert, update, and delete data via XML posted to the SQL virtual directory, avoiding OPENXML and URL length limits; he details the UpdateGram structure (<sync>, <before>, <after>), implicit and explicit XDR mapping strategies, NULL and identity handling, concurrency considerations, and practical execution tips for using UpdateGrams to map XML to relational tables.

Markus Egger demonstrates how HTML, XML and XSL can be used inside standard Windows applications to create highly flexible, data-driven interfaces: pull data as XML from databases or business objects, transform it to HTML with XSLT, render it in the WebBrowser control, and handle custom link navigation to integrate with native forms—offering an alternative to rigid Windows grids and controls that simplifies complex, hierarchical displays and interaction without relying on the Internet.

In this article, Travis Vandersypen explains how XPath Queries combined with XML-Data Reduced (XDR) Schemas enable developers to access and query SQL Server 2000 data without needing detailed knowledge of SQL or database structure. By defining XML schemas that map database tables and relationships, developers can retrieve and manipulate XML-formatted data directly via URLs using familiar XPath syntax. This approach shifts complexity to DBAs, allowing schema changes witho...ut impacting application code, and facilitates more flexible, XML-based data access and integration in SQL Server 2000 environments.See More

Though the XML Editor in Visual Studio 2005 has many improvements, it still lacks support for writing and testing XPath queries. In this article, I’ll show you how to leverage the Visual Studio SDK to extend the XML Editor to allow you to write and text XPath queries in Visual Studio 2005.

XQuery will likely become the dominant language for querying data from most data sources.Although designed for querying XML data, you can use XQuery to tie together data from multiple data sources. In that respect it is much more powerful than SQL, which will slowly but surely be replaced as the main query language.

In this article, Simon Ferguson explains XSL patterns as a powerful, simplified subset of XPath used to query and manipulate XML documents. He highlights how XSL patterns function similarly to SQL Select statements by allowing precise selection, filtering, and transformation of XML nodes. Through examples and explanations of syntax, Ferguson demonstrates how understanding and using these patterns enable efficient extraction and restructuring of XML data, making them esse...ntial for working with XSL stylesheets and advanced XML querying tasks.See More