Rod Stephens $39.99, 503 pages, 2002 John Wiley & Sons ISBN 0-471-12060-X Paperback By providing a simple, flexible data storage format, XML is positioned to become the lingua franca of data transfer. This book explains how you can take advantage of XML in your Visual Basic .NET applications.

The extensible markup language (XML) is a simple but powerful language that lets you store data in XML files effortlessly. By standardizing data storage, XML lets any number of applications share data with little effort on the programmer's part. Data gathered by one application can be shared with other applications running anywhere on the Internet or on a private network.

Visual Basic .NET is tightly integrated with XML. It uses XML to transfer data to and from databases, to represent database schemas, and to store Visual Basic project data itself. Take a look in a .vbproj file and you'll see it staring you in the face.

This book explains how to take advantage of XML in your Visual Basic .NET applications. It tells how to:

• Use the DOM (document object model) to manipulate an XML file's structure
• Use high-performance methods for reading and writing XML files one line at a time
• Call Web Services to use functionality implemented across the Internet
• Serialize and deserialize objects so you can easily store and retrieve them from text and binary data streams
• Validate XML data with schemas
• Use XSL to format XML for output as HTML, VoiceXML, text, and other formats
• Use ASP.NET to implement data islands.

Reviews

VISUAL BASIC .NET AND XML, by Rob Stephens (sic) and Brian Hochgurtel (Wiley): This one assumes that you know your way around VB.NET, but that XML is a mystery. But that doesn't mean it's a beginning book; it introduces XML quickly and then covers its use in .NET in depth. Excellent chapters on topics such as serialization and schemas in .NET anchor this book, which includes lots of code samples. After showing you the mechanics, it gets into uses for XML data on the web and in other places. Much less handwaving than some other treatments of the topic, and a good mix of general XML stuff and .NET-specific implementation details.