XML Tools in Visual Studio

Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language that provides a format for describing data. This facilitates more precise declarations of content and more meaningful search results across multiple platforms. In addition, XML enables the separation of presentation from data. For example, in HTML you use tags to tell the browser to display data as bold or italic; in XML you use tags only to describe data, such as city name, temperature, and barometric pressure. In XML you use style sheets such as Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) and cascading style sheets (CSS) to present the data in a browser. XML separates the data from the presentation and the process. This enables you to display and process the data as you want to, by applying different style sheets and applications.

XML is a subset of SGML that is optimized for delivery over the Web. It is defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). This standardization guarantees that structured data will be uniform and independent of applications or vendors.

XML is at the core of many features of Visual Studio and the .NET Framework. The following topic list names the tools and features related to XML that are offered in Visual Studio and the .NET Framework.

For more information, see the XML Developer Center (https://msdn.Microsoft.com/xml), which provides the latest documentation, technical information, downloads, newsgroups, and other resources for XML developers.

In This Section

• Working with XML Data
  Discusses the role of XML in the way data is handled in Visual Studio.

Reference

• XML Standards Reference
  Provides information about XML technologies, including XML, Document Type Definition (DTD), XML Schema definition language (XSD), and XSLT.

• System.Xml
  Describes the classes and other elements that make up the System.Xml namespace and provides links to more detailed information on each item.

• System.Xml.Serialization
  Describes the classes and other elements that make up the System.Xml.Serialization namespace and provides links to more detailed information about each item.

Related Sections

• XML Document Object Model (DOM)
  Describes how the XmlDocument and its associated classes comply with the W3C Document Object Model (Core) Level 1 and Level 2 namespace support specifications.

• Reading XML with the XmlReader
  Describes how the XmlReader provides noncached, forward only, read-only access to XML data over an XML stream.

• Writing XML with the XmlWriter
  Describes how the XmlWriter provides noncached, forward only, way of generating XML streams and helps you build XML documents that comply with the W3C standard.

• XSLT Transformations
  Describes how the XslCompiledTransform class implements the XSLT 1.0 recommendation.

• Process XML Data Using the XPath Data Model
  Describes how the XPathNavigator class can process XML data stored in an XPathDocument or an XmlDocument object. The XPathNavigator class is based on the XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Data Model and can be used to navigate and edit XML data.

• XML Schema Object Model (SOM)
  Describes the classes used for creating and manipulating XML Schemas, by providing an XmlSchema class to load and edit a schema.

• Resolve External XML Resources Named by a URI
  Explains that the XmlResolver is an abstract class that resolves external XML resources named by a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI).