132 Chapter 4 " Using XML in the .NET Framework These classes are there mostly to extend and provide additional access to XML documents that the W3C has either not thought of or has decided not to include in their recommendations. Explaining a Selection of System.Xml Classes Now that youve seen how the DOM corresponds to the System.Xml classes, lets look at the most common of these classes.The first class we are going to look at is XmlNode. As you learned from examining the .NET DOM, every node type inherits directly from the XmlNode class.The XmlNode class is abstract, which means that you cannot directly create an XmlNode class; instead, you must create one of the classes that subclass XmlNode. See Table 4.11 for a subset of XmlNodes properties and methods. Table 4.11  XmlNode Properties and Methods Type Name Description Property Attributes Gets an XmlAttributeCollection con- taining the attributes of this node. Property ChildNodes Gets the children of this node. Property FirstChild Gets the first child of this node. Property HasChildNodes Returns a Boolean value indicating whether the node has any child nodes. Property InnerText Gets or sets the value of this node and all children. Property InnerXml Gets or sets the markup representing the children of this node. Property LastChild Gets the last child of this node. Property Name Gets the name of this node. Property NextSibling Gets the node immediately following this node. Property NodeType Gets the type of the current node. Property OuterXml Gets the XML representing this node and all of its children. Property ParentNode Gets the parent of this node. Property PreviousSibling Gets the node immediately before this node. Property Value Gets or sets the value of this node. www.syngress.com Continued 155_xml_net_pd_C04.qk  3/6/02  1:57 PM  Page 132