Chapter 27 XML Serialization Architecture

Objective Chart contains an XML persistence mechanism that allows charts to be serialized in an XML format. This serialization architecture is built upon the Stingray XML Serialization Framework that is now a part of the Stingray Foundation Library (SFL). For an overview of the core framework and the usage semantics involved, please refer to the SFL documentation on this topic.

Because users can serialize Objective Chart as XML, they can use the chart data— through XSL transformations—in contexts other than the native application. A likely scenario would be a light-weight, web-based front end displaying a chart/graph using an HTML stream provided by an XSL transformation of the XML data exported by an MFC application using Objective Chart. Studying the XML output obtained by serializing a chart should provide users with an insight into the schema adopted by the serialization mechanism.

NOTE >> If you are using Microsoft Visual Studio, the latest version of the Microsoft® Platform SDK is a requirement for building the Stingray Studio libraries with support for XML serialization functionality. In order to properly build XML support as part of the Objective Grid library or the Objective Chart library, our XML classes require you to install the latest version of the Platform SDK on your system. Moreover, the Platform SDK header files must precede any other include files and/or lib files in your development environment path. We tested our components against MSXML.dll version 6.10.1200.0 (MSXML 6.0 SP1). Later versions of this DLL will also work. You can download the Platform SDK from:http://www.microsoft.com/msdownload/platformsdk/sdkupdate/.