Read XML file as DataSet

Question

I am inexperienced with parsing XML files, and I am saving line graph data to an xml file, so I did a little bit of research. According to this article, out of all the ways to read an XML file, DataSet is the fastest. And it makes sense that I use DataSet since there could be a significant amount of data. Here's how my graph documents look:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="yes" ?>
<BreezyCalc>
    <Graph Version="3.0" Mode="static">
        <Range>
            <X Min="-20" Max="20" />
            <Y Min="-20" Max="20" />
        </Range>
        <Lines>
            <Line Name="MyLine1" R="0" G="255" B="0">
                <Point X="-17" Y="9" />
                <Point X="7" Y="-5" />
                <Point X="10" Y="4" />
                <Point X="-6" Y="2" />
            </Line>
            <Line Name="MyLine2" R="255" G="0" B="0">
                <Point X="-7" Y="3" />
                <Point X="8" Y="-1" />
                <Point X="-4" Y="-4" />
                <Point X="-1" Y="6" />
            </Line>
        </Lines>
    </Graph>
</BreezyCalc>

Since there could be a large number of points in these lines, I need to get the data as quickly and with as little resources as possible. If there is a faster approach than DataSet, please enlighten me. Otherwise, could someone show me how I would get my graph data using a DataSet as my XML parser?

Answer 1

If you want to use a DataSet, it is very simple.

// Here your xml file
string xmlFile = "Data.xml";

DataSet dataSet = new DataSet();
dataSet.ReadXml(xmlFile, XmlReadMode.InferSchema);

// Then display informations to test
foreach (DataTable table in dataSet.Tables)
{
    Console.WriteLine(table);
    for (int i = 0; i < table.Columns.Count; ++i)
        Console.Write("\t" + table.Columns[i].ColumnName.Substring(0, Math.Min(6, table.Columns[i].ColumnName.Length)));
    Console.WriteLine();
    foreach (var row in table.AsEnumerable())
    {
        for (int i = 0; i < table.Columns.Count; ++i)
        {
            Console.Write("\t" + row[i]);
        }
        Console.WriteLine();
    }
}

If you want something faster, you can try with XmlReader which read line after line. But it is a bit more difficult to develop. You can see it here : http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/cc189056(v=vs.95).aspx