XML is a completely platform agnostic data medium. Flash is able to make use of XML data, which is very useful when you are creating Rich Internet Applications – it allows you to populate Flash web interfaces with data from pretty much any source that supports XML as a data medium, be it databases, raw XML files, or more excitingly, .Net applications, web services, and even Microsoft Office applications such as Excel and Word!

In this book, Sas Jacobs first introduces XML itself—what it is, its syntax, its associated technologies (such as CSS and XSLT,) and how to get XML out of your applications in a format Flash can use.

Then she shows how to use the XML object to stream XML data into Flash, and how to use the XMLConnector component and XML Sockets to build advanced Flash/XML applications. Numerous example applications are built throughout the book, including an MP3 player, XML photo gallery, an Excel-driven web catalog, Access and Word-driven content management systems, and an XML-driven chat application.