Review

As it says in the introduction to the book, this book covers the intersection between two great technologies: .NET and XML.

One great thing about this book is that only the first chapter is used to cover the background material.. This is enough to remind us of the scope of what we are dealing with in the rest of the book. Unlike some books which waste half the book covering the basics which are also covered in all the other books you have on your shelf.

Chapter 2 gives an overview of all the places that XML is used in .NET. The next five chapters give detailed coverage of the XML related namespaces. There are dozens of short examples programs, given in both C# and VB.NET, to demonstrate how to use the classes in the various namespaces. Of particular interest was the coverage in the Validating XML chapter. In this chapter we learn how XSD Schemas are very useful in your database and ADO.NET work. The Serializing XML chapter came in very handy for my own work. After reading this chapter I replace the code I had written for persisting user preferences. The classes I had written for using serialization, came in handy when I needed to move that data across the network using remoting.

I wasn't very interested in learning more about MSXML, since I plan to do my XML work using the namespaces in the .NET framework. After starting to read the MSXML chapter, I was glad I didn't skip it. This chapter is written for developers who are experienced with using MSXML, and possible have lots of existing code written using MSXML. This chapter shows how you can use your existing code and designs in your .NET programs using MSXML. There is also excellent coverage of how standard MSXML coding techniques, can be translated to use .NET, especially when those techniques have no obvious replacement.

In the chapter on Extending XmlReader and XmlWriter, an example is written to show how to add XML streaming capability to applications which don't have that capability built in. Using the example code, data can be moved back and forth between a table in Word and a diagram in Visio. Internal to your program, the data is handled as XML.

The ADO.NET chapter doesn't bother teaching you the basics of ADO.NET, since that has been covered extensively elsewhere. For example the book Professional ADO.NET Programming would be an excellent book to learn more about ADO.NET. What this chapter does cover is how XML is integrated into ADO.NET. Several short example programs are given, to show how your data can easily be treated as XML or as datasets, independent of its origin, database or XML.

Most of my code, before the appearance of Visual Studio.NET Beta 1 and C# was written in C++, and some VB. From this perspective, I found ASP and VBScript to be a real pain. The usage of COM & DCOM to build components to move complexity out of the ASP script came with its own set of problems. ASP.NET solves those problems and hassles. Now we can use the same code, APIs (namespaces), and tools to create web applications that we use for building desktop and client server applications. Since the focus of this book is XML, the ASP.NET chapter doesn't attempt to teach you all about ASP.NET. The focus of this chapter is on how ASP.NET makes use of XML and how to work with the configuration files. For in depth coverage of ASP.NET the book Professional ASP.NET 1.0, Special Edition, would be an excellent choice.

The Case Study: Using ASP.NET and ADO.NET, is a great example of how to use the material covered in the first 11 chapters in a real application.

The Web Services and SOAP chapter is an introduction to creating Web Service, servers and clients. The simple examples are used to show the details of SOAP messages, as well as HTTP GET, HTTP POST, and SOAP headers. We also learn about Web Service Directories (UDDI), and Web Service Description Language (WSDL). Although the samples are introductory in nature, the chapter has in-depth analysis of what is going on behind these simple examples.

Then we have the Case Study: Using Web Service. This case study goes through a formal design procedure, and shows how to map that design to a Web Service, built using Visual Studio and .NET. Included is the design and implementation of both a Windows Forms client and an ASP.NET client. By working through this case study as well as the ASP.NET case study earlier in the book, you will be building the skills you need to make full use of what the rest of the book has taught you.

The Remoting Overview chapter is your basic introduction to remoting with some simple examples. The lack of detailed remoting coverage in this book is not a major problem, since the book C# Web Services, Building Web Services with .NET Remoting and ASP.NET has more detailed coverage.

A good way to polish off the book would be an introduction to using C# Code Documentation, but this chapter goes well beyond that. This last chapter introduces the tags and has some guidelines on how to use them. Then comes the treat, an example of how to generate documentation for your components. This example makes full use of the C# Code Documentation as well as XSL style sheets with embedded scripts. The scripts make use of refection to obtain additional information about your code.

I found two things missing. First, the downloadable code does not contain C# versions of the ASP.NET and Web Services examples. Second, the chapter on remoting does not cover the contents of the configuration files. Configuration files for remoting is another example of how XML is used by the .NET framework, so should be covered in this book.

XML plays a major role in the .NET framework as well as everything that Microsoft is doing. The topics covered in this book are necessary tools for anyone who wants to call themselves a Windows developer. This book has excellent coverage and depth of all aspects of using XML in the .NET framework.

Reviewed by Bill Burris