Third-party compatibility of the ADO.Net XML data format
I would like to know what is the compatibility of the XML format for storing data, as used by some ADO.Net classes, with third-party standards and products. More specifically, if I read data from a database into a DataSet and then used theWriteXMLmethod (with thefilenameandXmlWriteMode::WriteSchemaparameters), what could I expect about the use of the resulting file in scenarios not associated with ADO.Net? Could I import the data as tables (and, hopefully, the schema relations) into a DBMS (like MS Access)? In other words, once I produce an XML file from a DataSet, can I hope that a user who is not using ADO.Net-enabled applications will have any good use of it?
Kamen
[751 byte] By [
Kamen] at [2007-12-26]
Hmmm, I wonder if the silence means nobody knows or ... "what a stupid question"? 
Anyway, after some searching I found that the msdata.xsd schema definition used in that format is public, so technically - yes, the data in the XML file can be useful to non-ADO.Net users (although it isn't clear exactly how comprehensive msdata.xsd really is). And it is very feasible that no software company (or open-source project) has rushed into including that format in their "data import" options. (Although Open Office does list ADO as a supported data provider, whatever that means.) I'm mostly wondering if Microsoft has (or is planning to provide) support for that format in its own products. I heard that the new MS Office will be using XML as its document file format, but would the new MS Access be able to open the XML representation of a DataSet and convert it to tables, possibly preserving relationships?
Kamen
