Overview of XML in the .NET Framework
This document summarizes the .NET Framework XML classes and the processing options they provide.
Summary of Design Goals
The XML classes in the .NET Framework have been designed to offer:
High productivity
Compliance with W3C standards
Extensibility
A pluggable architecture
High performance
Integration with ADO.NET
For detailed information on the suite of XML classes in the .NET Framework, see the System.Xml, System.Xml.XPath, System.Xml.Xsl, System.Xml.Schema, and System.Xml.Linq namespaces.
Summary of XML Processing Options
In-memory XML processing: The .NET Framework provides three options for processing XML data in-memory: LINQ to XML the XPathNavigator class, and the XmlDocument class.
Stream-based XML processing: The XmlWriter and XmlReader classes provide a non-cached, forward-only means of processing XML data.
For more information, see XML Processing Options in the .NET Framework.
See Also
Concepts
Reading XML with the XmlReader