Use XML and cryptography under .NET

There is a vast group of Visual C++ coders out there, you perhaps amongst them. Successfully writing and maintaining what is perhaps now large source code bodies. In doing so, you've become quite experienced and you know the ins and outs of Visual C++. But about 2 years ago, Microsoft starting pushing a wonderful new .NET platform. Impressive claims about how one could develop code in several languages sitting atop this. Technically nice. But for you, much of this was moot. You and others in your group have no inclination to start coding in Pascal, anyway. You cannot abandon Visual C++.

So the authors wrote this book, targeted towards you. It is not a comprehensive introduction to .NET. But they chose to focus on a few topics that you might value. XML for example. This is now a widely adopted standard for data interchange, and if your code isn't already familiar with it, then it might be a good thing to add. It motivates you to start dipping into .NET. Plus, in order to parse XML, they show how to use the standard Document Object Model (DOM) parser that is available under .NET. All useful stuff.

They also use cryptography as another hook into .NET. It is just a guess, but some of your applications might need this. So here is how to use some of the latest advanced implementations of hashing and public key infrastructure. And if these are done in .NET, well, gosh, what a coincidence. :)

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• Use XML and cryptography under .NET