A Smart Client is an application that uses local processing, consumes XML Web Services and can be deployed and updated from a centralized server.

The following code shows to how to perform a case-sensitive search in .NET using XPath.

This code demonstrates how to create a new XML file using XmlDocument.

Create an XmlElement object with inner text and make it a child of another XmlNode. Note: requires Imports System.Xml

In the XmlNode class, that is the class that provides node functionality in an XMLDOM representation of an XML document, the SelectNodes (and the ancillary SelectSingleNode) method exploits the XPath query language to let you extract nodes based on logical conditions. The SelectNodes methods return a collection of XmlNode object, whereas SelectSingleNode returns only the first node that match the XPath criteria. However, a quick look at the implementation of SelectSingleNode suggests that using SelectNodes is often preferable. The following pseudocode shows the internal working of SelectSingleNode:

Microsoft's .NET framework provides a multilayered application development platform ideal for building XML-based Web services, a Microsoft engineer emphasized during a keynote presentation at the Software Development Conference and Expo on Wednesday.

This is a video showing Steve Balmer talking about the XML.NET.

One of the more powerful facilities of the .NET framework is its capability to store and retrieve object state from XML in a process called XML object serialization. In this article, Dale Michalk shows how to use this to parse and create XML documents with ease and minimal coding.

In this article, Dale Michalk focuses on the Document Object Model (DOM) API for XML information processing. Most programmers have become accustomed to this model while using XML parsers such as MXSML.

Are you interested in presenting a 45-minute talk on some applied XML or Web Services topic? It doesn't matter which platform or OS you're targeting. It also doesn't matter whether you're an author or vendor or professional speaker or a developer in the trenches (in fact, I tend to be biased towards the latter). We're after interesting and unique applications of XML and Web Services technology and if you're doing good work in that area, then I need you to send me a session topic and 2-4 sentence abstract along with a little bit about yourself.

XML and Web services are emerging as the platform for service-oriented architecture (SOA), both for intra- and inter-enterprise communication. As the first Java integrated development environment (IDE) for both authoring and consuming SOA, WebLogic Workshop inherently pushed the envelope with proprietary innovations. Since then, BEA has delivered on the promise of investment protection for these innovations via mechanisms ranging from open standards to open source. BEA's commitment to investment protection frees developers to take advantage of its cutting-edge productivity and integration features without fear of vendor lock-in. Let's take a look at the key SOA-based innovations in Workshop and how investment is protected in each case.

XML is the preferred way of transporting data from one system to another because it represents the structure and relationships of data elements without regard for presentation. XML has become the standard method for transporting data and has consequently driven the evolution of other technologies in recent years. Web services use HTTP/XML to request services and receive results. Databases support direct input and output of XML. XPath supports XML queries, and XSLT controls the visual presentation of XML data.

Microsoft's Longhorn will introduce XAML, an application development framework for Web and Windows apps. But just how different is XAML from the already-available public standards set by the W3C?

By far one of the easiest web controls to implement into a website, the AdRotator is a great introduction into plugging a control into your site, as well as a good introduction for those of you who have little experience with XML. From start to finish, it took me about 10 minutes to have rotating ads on the bottom of all my pages, with the ability to show certain ads more often than others. There are two steps to using the AdRotator on your page: creating an instance of the AdRotator web control on the page and creating the advertisement xml file.

There are many situations where you might find yourself holding an XmlReader that contains XML fragments representing data rows or pieces of an XML document. One of the most common is if you perform a query against SQL Server with a FOR XML clause. Another might be if you get that row set from a Web services call. Unless you just rip through the nodes in a forward-only, read-only, node-level manner, you will probably want to get that data in a more usable form for you application. You may want to get the data into an XmlDocument so that you can work with it using the XML Document Object Model (DOM), or you may want to get it into a DataSet so that you can easily data-bind against it. You may want to do both - be able to run XPath queries against the data, and data-bind to a grid in the UI.

the adoption of XML will enable the Web to enter a new dimension of use and usefulness. In this chapter from his book, Dave Carlson shows you how to recombine the XML information content with a presentation that is appropriate for the viewing device and the user's requirements in order to create a portal application.

In a recent issue of this column, I gave you a quick overview of the new features in ADO.NET 2.0 for data access. Now I want to cover what is new on the XML side of the data access equation in .NET 2.0. XML usage for a variety of data scenarios continues to grow by leaps and bounds. There is just no better approach to bringing together heterogeneous data than working with it in the form of XML. As such, Microsoft continues to try to make the XML management capabilities of .NET more and more powerful to make your life easier.

In XPath Basics I gave a quick introduction to the syntax of XPath expressions to help the uninitiated get comfortable with XPath, which is a very important technology to understand for working with XML data of many forms. The thing about XPath is that it can't do anything on its own; it needs a processing engine to perform work based on the expressions. That processing engine could come in many forms.

Microsoft's Internet Explorer version 4.0 was the first Web browser to support XML. Since then XML support has been introduced in various Microsoft products, such as Office XP and SQL Server 2000. Microsoft re-assured its commitment by including extensive support for XML in the .NET framework.

Sometime you may need to query a database and produce the results as an XML file. The .Net XML Web Control makes this extremely easy to do. All you have to do is create an instance of the XML control on your .aspx page. A very few lines of code can then be used to display the database query as XML. To show you how easy this is, note the aspx file immediately below - two lines of code, counting the @Page directive!