ADO .NET makes it extremely easy to create XML documents. This is the only code you need to create a XML document where the principal customer contact is the owner using the Northwind sample database from Microsoft. Don't worry about all the new and unfamiliar code here ... we'll consider the details of this type of program in future articles.

' Declare the ADO .NET objects
Dim myData As New DataSet()
Dim myXML As String
Dim mySelectQuery As String = _
    "SELECT CompanyName FROM Suppliers"
Dim myConnection As New _
    OleDbConnection( _
    "Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;" & _
    "Data Source={path}\Northwind.mdb")
Dim strSelect As String = _
    "SELECT * FROM Customers WHERE ContactTitle = 'Owner'"
Dim dsCmd As _
    New OleDbDataAdapter(strSelect, myConnection)
' Fill the DataSet object
dsCmd.Fill(myData, "CustomerOwners")
' Create a text XML document
myData.WriteXml("TestXML.txt")
myConnection.Close()

Once we have XML, virtually all computer environments are open to our data. The excellent support of ADO .NET and VB .NET for XML make interoperability a snap.

In future articles, we'll dive into the coding details behind ADO .NET.