XML Access Modes, Object Models, and Serialization in .Net

When I researched the topic of my recent post about the XmlSerializer I became aware that there are more ways to process XML data in .Net than I knew about. Here is an overview of how you can access XML data in .Net.

XML data

The .Net framework provides the following classes to store XML data in memory:

XmlDocument

XDocument

XSD proxy classes

XML serialization

The .Net framework implements a set of dependent classes to serialize and deserialize XML data. Each class in this list can be instantiated using a parameter of the classes below it:

XmlSerializer

XmlReader, XmlWriter

TextReader (implemented by StreamReader), TextWriter (implemented by StreamWriter)

Stream (implemented by FileStream)

filename (string)

XML query and manipulation

Besides the classes named above, other classes exist to query and manipulate XML data:

XPathNavigator

XPathDocument

Putting it all together

Data model	Access (MSDN summary)	Serialization	XML Query
XmlDocument	“Represents an XML document.” In-Memory	OuterXml LoadXml() Load(XmlReader), Save(XmlWriter)	XPath SelectSingleNode(), SelectNodes(); Linq To Objects; XPathNavigator CreateNavigator()
XDocument	“Represents an XML document.” In-Memory	Load(XmlReader), Save(XmlWriter), Parse()	XmlReader CreateReader(); Linq To Xml; XPathNavigator CreateNavigator()
XSD proxy classes	In-Memory	XmlSerializer, Introduction on MSDN	Linq To Objects
XmlReader	“a reader that provides fast, non-cached, forward-only access to XML data.”	Create(…)	GetAttribute(), MoveTo(), Read()
XmlNodeReader	“a reader that provides fast, non-cached forward only access to XML data in an XmlNode.”	(XmlNode)	derived from XmlReader
XPathNavigator	“a cursor model for navigating and editing XML data.” “read-only if created by XPathDocument; editable if created by XmlDocument“	(CreateNavigator())	GetAttribute(), Value, MoveTo(); XPath Select(), Select(); XmlReader ReadSubtree()
XPathDocument	“a fast, read-only, in-memory representation of an XML document”	Constructor()	XPathNavigator CreateNavigator()