XML documents have become a great way to pass data from one application to another. Whether communicating from one DLL to another, from one EXE to another, or even from one server to another, XML is simple, easy, and efficient to pass around. In many other Microsoft languages, you used the Microsoft.XMLDOM object to process XML documents. In .NET, the equivalent object is called XmlDocument. In this paper, you learn how to work with XML documents within the .NET Framework.

This two-part article offers an introduction to the Xerces-C++ XML library. Part 1 explains how to link the library into applications written in Linux and Windows. Ample code demonstrates parsing with the SAX API, and a sample application shows you how to create a bar graph in ASCII art. In Part 2, I'll demonstrate how to load, manipulate, or synthesize a DOM document, and you'll see how to create the same bar graph using Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG). C++ programmers who read these articles should be able to easily add XML parsing and processing capabilities to their applications.

RXP is a validating parser written in C that creates a non-DOM tree representation of XML documents. While RXP itself is not well documented -- and not for the faint of heart -- at least two excellent higher level APIs have been built on top of RXP: pyRXP, a Python binding; and LT XML, a collection of utilities and libraries. In this article, David introduces you to RXP, compares it with the expat parser, and briefly discusses pyRXP and LT XML as ways of taking advantage of the speed RXP has to offer without all of its complexity.