Add Persistence to Your XML Data Islands

n last month's article, you saw how to display XML data in IE5 through IE's data island component. This month's installment focuses on letting users modify that data and, ultimately, updating it to a persistent store.

Last month you learned how to display read-only XML data in Internet Explorer 5+ (IE), but not how to modify and save the data. Browser security settings typically prohibit you from saving data on the client. So the problem is: How do you modify the data and make it persistent?



Using ADO or DOM methods you can make your data islands do the hula, for example, users can add, modify, or delete records and then persist them locally. For documents under 64K in length, you can persist them using IE's userData behavior. You can persist larger documents locally using a signed ActiveX control.