Need help with ASP .NET

Hi,

For my final year project at university I am creating an online auction venue, loosely based on the principles behind ebay. The site will be coded in ASP.NET and it will host consumer to consumer auctions.

My question is, how can XML be used in such a site? The reason why I am asking this strange question is that one of my lecturers hinted that it could be useful and that correct use could be taken into account when the project is marked.

I realise that XML can be very powerful but I don't know how it could be used specifically. We have covered the basics of XML and XSLT in the course, but not in this context. For a previous ecommerce project we simply used an Access database and executed queries using SQL.

If there are any experts on dynamic sites who could help to explain how it can be used then I would be grateful. I'm not asking for a detailed technical explanation, just some ideas.

Cheers,

James

Well I assume you're going to have a database behind it so I'm unsure of the reasons behind using XML. If you've got a database then XML can go blow itself.

You could use XML instead of a database... but that would be insane.

I suppose you use XML in your web.config file!?

You're far better off with a mySQL database in the backend dealing with everything from the items to sell to the menus on the screen.

XML is ideal for messenging between systems due to everything being tagged and it's nice and portable, but not sure where that would come into it.

Maybe he is thinking you could provide an XML feed of items that are up for sale. For instance create a simple RSS feed that a reader like SharpReader could connect to. It would be trivial to do since you will have a database with all the auction information stored.

http://developer.ebay.com/xml/

that link shows the developer section for XMl on eBay. Might be some ideas in there. Or here:

http://developer.ebay.com/common/api

{guessing}...

Use the XML as 'middleware' in the serving up of pages... i.e. Have your queries pour their results into XML pages (rather than hard-coding HTML around the results) and then use XSLT to actually display the XML elements in a browser.

In this way you can easily have dynamic pages that can hide/display additional information, etc. (without having to refresh the page via the server) through the use of {visible} parts and you can customise the display for different environments (e.g. screen, print, pda, etc.)

Personally I'd use it, and infact we do use it currently, for the integration between our payment systems and the ordering and reporting systems. So we use it as transactional middleware, it provides the translation services between different legacy systems.

Except if said database is Access.

I think BlackJumper probably nailed it, but Indiepath makes a good point about using XML to provide 3rd party compatibility.