Overview
Since it became available on February 10, 1998, Extensible
Markup Language (XML) has been broadly supported and used. Today every
development framework supports XML and its related specifications, such as the
following:
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XML Schema Definition (XSD) To define the structure of XML
documents
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Extensible Stylesheet Language for Transformations (XSLT) To
transform XML documents from one schema to another
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XPath and XQuery To search and traverse XML contents
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Document Object Model (DOM) To manage in-memory
representations of documents
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Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) services To realize
platform interoperability using XML messages
Despite its widespread use, XML is still often a hostile
technology for many developers because of its rigorous syntax. LINQ to XML
provides a new unified API, called the LINQ to XML API, to define and manage
XML contents using Microsoft .NET code. The LINQ to XML API is fully integrated
with the .NET type system and syntax. LINQ to XML uses LINQ extension methods
to read, create, search, query, and generally manage XML contents within
application code using .NET code and a language-agnostic API, the same as with
entities, database records, and collections of items in general.
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