Newbie

[dBjason]

Hello,

XML and its benefits are very new to me. I have been given a project, and was recently suggested that I explore XML as an option. But I have no idea if it will suffice. Any suggestions/help/whatever would be greatly appreciated.

I am designing an application (VB.NET/WCF/SQL Server) which is supposed to generate letters. These letters are currently stored in an nvarchar(max) field in SQL. An example letter looks like this:

Dear <variable>, CRLF Please know you have <variable> days to pay $<variable>. CRLF Best Regards, CRLF <variable>

The variables are user-selected/entered data. They are captured with .NET, passed to WCF and eventually to SQL Server where the record can be parsed/populated with the user data and returned.

My question is, is this a job for XML? And if so, how can I set this up and what tools should I be looking at? Any information would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Jason

 

[harebrain]

XML is a mark-up language: it's a data file that includes the context of the data. XML is not a programming language: it doesn't DO anything.

You have VB.NET as a programming language and your data is stored in a SQL Server database. Presumably your job is to perform a mail-merge. If your data and mail templates are readily available to you from the database, you have nothing to gain by throwing XML into the mix other than an unnecessary complication.

Whoever made that suggestion was blowing smoke.