ADO.NET Overview, Page 6

As more and more companies move toward XML as the standard for cross-platformcommunication, Microsoft is making an active effort to use this structure topower many of its new technologies.

One application of this is in ADO.NET — where literally all data isintrinsically stored in such a format.

And you can easily tap into this store by getting your information into aDataSet — then accessing the.ReadXml,.WriteXml and .GetXmlfunctions.

In addition, you can parse XML programmatically using the System.Xml.XmlDocumentobject.