XML and VB.net

XML – Extended Markup Language, which is a subset of SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language) is a tag based language which is very apt in handling data across applications, also it is a platform independent language that is, information formatted in XML can be used in various Operating Systems, also it is a self describing language so it provides the data and rules which can be used to identify the information it contains.

XML files are made up of tags that contain data. Generally a start tag and end tag to hold the data. For example, if you want to create an XML tag name "Header”, the start tag is like < Header > and the end tag is like < /Header >. We can fill our information between these tags.

< Header > Header Content Here < /Header >
here are some important points to remember while creating an XML file
* XML is case sensitive
ex: < Header > is not same as < HeadeR > .
* Tags must be closed in the reverse order that they were opened
ex : < first-tag >< second-tag > Data here < /second-tag > < /first-tag >

Sample XML File

product.xnl

The .Net technology is widely supported XML file format. The .Net Framework provides the Classes to read, write, and other operations in XML formatted files. These classes are stored in the namespaces like System.Xml, System.Xml.Schema, System.Xml.Serialization, System.Xml.XPath, System.Xml.Xsl etc. The Dataset in ADO.NET uses XML as its internal storage format.You can use any text editor to create an XML file.