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MSXML in Windows Mobile 5.0

  • Artigo

MSXML is the standard Microsoft XML parser for native applications.  It was originally developed for desktop Windows but was ported to Windows CE.  MSXML has shipped in every version of the PocketPC since PPC 2000.  PPC 2000, 2002, and 2003 all shipped a port of MSXML2.

In Windows Mobile 5.0, we have *finally* shipped MSXML3 SP1 (which was available for general embedded CE devices for a long time).  Hooray!  The most important new features of MSXML3 are SAX and XSLT.

One MSXML feature WM 5.0 does NOT support that previous versions did is XML error strings.  These error strings really are only for developer's use for debugging xml.  They are things like "xml element <foo> is missing its closing tag".  They were left out in order to save approximately 40KB of ROM on WM devices.

This isn't that big of a limitation.  These messages are hopefully not something you would display to the end user even if you could.  (I doubt my grandma would appreciate the significance of "xml element <foo> is missing its closing tag" :)).  If you have to understand why some XML isn't working, you can use the desktop MSXML to debug and get the more useful error strings.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    August 29, 2005
    XSLT!! Not a minute too soon! The world is a better place.

  • Anonymous
    December 26, 2005
    Does MSXML3 for WinCE supports IServerXMLHTTPRequest2 interface?

  • Anonymous
    January 03, 2006
    No IServerXMLHTTPRequest2 on WinCE. http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/wcexmldm/html/ceconxmlforwindowscenet.asp has list of unsupported features compared to desktop.

  • Anonymous
    January 31, 2006
    I'm interested in streaming jpegs to a browser in a psydo web-cam fashion whereby it will request a new image as fast as the server and network can send. I've tried using javascript methods relying on the Image.onload event but alas this is not supported on PIE WM5. Since there are other controls on the page I don't want to refresh the page continually to request a new image so that is not an option. I simply wish to load images as fast as I can swapping a HTML image with a newer version.

    Can I use MSXML for this with possibly AJAX thrown into the mix? If so what steps should I take?

    Thanks

  • Anonymous
    February 10, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    April 11, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    May 01, 2006
    I am learning to create Smartphone home screens and I would like to parse the home.xml file in the plug in.  Is there any documentation anywhere on how to do that?

    Thanks,
    Bobby

  • Anonymous
    May 10, 2006
    Bobby - you can look up MSXML documentation on MSDN for how the parser itself works, though this won't say anything about how home.xml is laid out.  For that check out MSDN or one of the newsgroups (PocketPC related) listed at http://blogs.msdn.com/cenet/archive/2005/12/05/500181.aspx.  I'm not familiar with the home screen plugins so I can't really help much on this one. John Spaith

  • Anonymous
    May 10, 2006
    To answer GShirley's post, first you should definitely be using the CE development environment to do MSXML work and not trying to reference a desktop msxml.  The GUID should be the same for the XMLDOM on both desktop & CE, though on desktop they have all the different versions available so you could be getting into problems there.  Also be sure that your basic COM object calls in C# are OK -- I don't know if it's limited in anyway, but it's another moving piece.  I've never heard of other folks on WM5 having XSLT problems, but they've always went through native.

    If this doesn't help please follow up on a newsgroup since I obviously don't check the blog feedback often enough :(.

  • Anonymous
    July 04, 2006
    Say, how about xmllite on Windows Mobile?
    SAX is a real pain to use...

  • Anonymous
    July 26, 2006
    We don't have plans to ship xmllite in the near future.  I'm aware that it'd be helpful, but at present we have other areas we need to focus on.  Sorry for delay in responding to this.

    John

  • Anonymous
    September 30, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    October 02, 2006
    Paul -- On WM5, we ship msxml3.dll and not msxml.dll (or any sort of typelib stuff that would point directly to it).  The fact you're not seeing the DLL in windows is because you're fileviewer is still hiding it from you; some fileviewers still hide files built into ROM no matter whether you ask them to show you hidden files.  msxml3.dll is included on all WM5 era devices, both the PocketPC & SmartPhone form factors.  msxml3.dll does have the TLB still included as part of the dll (though it's called msxml2.tlb internally, confusingly enough).For future posts, you're better off using a newsgroup - http://blogs.msdn.com/cenet/archive/2005/12/05/500181.aspx lists a bunch I check - since because of SPAM I have to moderate the blog entry & I'm not as good at checking here as the newsgroups.John

  • Anonymous
    November 14, 2006
    So you want to do something with XML on WinCE / Windows Mobile and want to see sample code to do it.

  • Anonymous
    November 14, 2006
    Windows Mobile 5.0 shipped MSXML3, as I describe here . On PocketPC 2000-2003 devices, we ship MSXML2.

  • Anonymous
    January 21, 2007
    Does WM 5 support SORT function of XSL ???

  • Anonymous
    January 23, 2007
    WM5 supports the same XSL as was available in Windows XP RTM (it's MSXML3SP1).  I'm almost positive there's a SORT included in this, but I'm rusty on the details.  The CE documentation (or even MSXML3 documentation on the desktop or samples XSL for the desktop) should be able to get you the answer here.John

  • Anonymous
    March 28, 2007
    What is the minimum requierment for using MSXML on Windows CE 5.0.where can i find msxml requiered files(dll, bin, ...)Thanks

  • Anonymous
    April 12, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    June 07, 2007
    What is the limitation of data withstand by a xml parasar on windows mobile.I mean how much data can a xml parasar on windows mobile can take.is there any limitation if so what is the limitation.

  • Anonymous
    June 07, 2007
    Mahesh - the limitation of the MSXML parser is going to be limited by the amount of available virtual memory.  If you're using SAX based parsing it shouldn't be an issue, but with a DOM or XSLT you will start to bump into it.  Note on all current versions of Windows Mobile, VM limit is 32MB per process maximum.  (In CE 6 for embedded it is 4GB).  I've heard that for the DOM, the amoun of RAM used is about 10 times the size of the XML document that is read in but I've never validated this for myself and the source I heard it from wasn't Gospel (i.e. it wasn't someone on MSXML team).John

  • Anonymous
    August 09, 2007
    I don't really get it...If I want to read/write XML on a Windows CE 5.0 device, what are my options?Can I use XMLLite? Or do I have to use MSXML?What I want to do is read/write XML-data to and from MSMQ's

  • Anonymous
    August 13, 2007
    You have to use MSXML, or else a 3rd party parser if you don't like MSXML for whatever reason (usually it's around perf, though for most tasks MSXML perf is good enough).  There are some 3rd party stuff available for WM, I don't know of any for CE devices but doesn't mean there aren't any.  Unfortunately no CE version currently supports xmllite.

  • Anonymous
    September 03, 2007
    I want to do xml parsing on windows mobile but i dont know anything about it what should i do now?

  • Anonymous
    September 20, 2007
    Shashi - first apologies for long delay in responding.http://blogs.msdn.com/cenet/archive/2006/07/24/where-can-i-find-sample-code-to-do-xml-parsing-on-wince.aspx has info that should help get you started.John