NGWS SDK Documentation  

This is preliminary documentation and subject to change.
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Overview

The new XML and ADO+ frameworks provide a programming model, and the classes necessary to access data represented as either relational data, or XML data.

Relational data is represented as sets of tables, consisting of rows of columns. Each column has a name, data type, and other static self-descriptive information and attributes; and each row consists of repeating sets of columns. The intersection of a row and a column, sometimes called a field, contains a value of that column's data type. Tables may be associated with each other through constraints and relationships on their columns, enabling complex data representations.

XML data is represented textually by the data values themselves, delimited by tags that dynamically identify structure inherent to the data, and self-descriptive information such as the name and attributes of the data.

Relational data efficiently represents rigidly repeating sets of values, such as information in enterprise file and database systems. XML data efficiently represents information with possibly varying structure, such as data in e-mail systems and the Web.

The XML and ADO+ frameworks provide a common means of working with data regardless of its source. Information input as relational data can be accessed as if the source were XML data, and information input as XML data can be accessed as if the source were relational data. The programming model is straight-forward, and the object model delivers high performance.

The classes that comprise the XML and ADO+ frameworks enable three broad scenarios:

The next sections will provide details about the programming model for each of these scenarios.