Reasons for the XMLNuke
AnyDataSet and Data Access

How to use the Iterator and the variations of AnyDataSet to access various types of data

Table of contents
1. Introductory Concepts
2. The Context class
3. The FilenameProcessor Class
4. The LanguageCollection Class
5. AnyDataSet and Data Access
6. The "Util" NameSpace
7. Structure of Directories

On this page
AnyDataSet
Iterating an AnyDataSet - IIterator

AnyDataSet

AnyDataSet is a module to store a small quantity of data. The file structure of an AnyDataSet is very similar to the structure of a relational storage, but the physical persistence occurs in an XML document. However, this does not follow a rigid orientation of data definition, so that every entry can have their own field structure.

<anydataset>
  <row>
    <field name="key1">Value 1</field>
    <field name="key2">Value 2</field>
    <field name="key3">Value 3</field>
  </row>
  <row>
    <field name="key1">Value 1</field>
    <field name="key2">Value 2</field>
  </row>
</anydataset>

Iterating an AnyDataSet - IIterator

The AnyDataSet has a mechanism to iterate through the structure called an Iterator. This is very interesting because it establishes a standard method to iterate through the entire data structure in a singular way.

Currently, all of the objects to access data through XMLNuke implement the same Iterator interface; in other words, it doesn?t matter if you access a database or an XML file, since the method of obtaining this data will always be the same!

Currently, XMLNuke implements the following methods of accessing data:

• XML Files - AnyDataSet
• Database, various sources - DBDataSet (see more)
• CSV Files, local and remote - TextFileDataSet
• Array and Vectors - ArrayDataSet
• DataSet .NET object - DSDataSet

For example, an XmlEditList object can be set up by any data source, whether a database, an XML file or an array, for example.

For more information on how to access the AnyDataSet, access the technical reference.