Avner Aharoni

Avner Aharoni


Avner Aharoni is a Senior Program Manager at Microsoft and was the program manager responsible for the XML language integration in Visual Basic 9.0. Prior to that, he worked on XML and object to relational mapping and other XML features in SQL Server. Currently Avner is working on the next version of the Visual Basic language.

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Articles Authored

  • Sharpening Your Axis with Visual Basic 9

    Last updated: Wednesday, February 20, 2019

    Published in: CODE Magazine: 2008 - July/August

    Visual Basic 9 in Visual Studio 2008 has a new set of language features that allows developers to work with XML in a much more productive way using a new API called LINQ to XML. LINQ stands for Language Integrated Query and it allows you to write queries for things like objects, databases, and XML in a standard way. Visual Basic provides deep support for LINQ to XML through what’s called XML literals and XML axis properties. These features allow you to use a familiar, convenient syntax for working with XML in your Visual Basic code. LINQ to XML is a new, in-memory XML programming API specifically designed to leverage the LINQ framework. Even though you can call the LINQ APIs directly, only Visual Basic allows you to declare XML literals and directly access XML axis properties. This article will help you master these new features for working with XML in Visual Basic.