Microsoft Visual C# 2005 Unleashed

Chapter 7. I/O and Persistence

In this day and age of enterprise applications and smart clients that get their data from large relational databases like SQL Server and Oracle, it is often easy to overlook the fact that we still use the underlying file system for something other than storing shortcuts and documents.

We use files for numerous tasks, including storing configuration settings, images, icons, textual data (such as comma-delimited files from other sources like mainframes), file-based databases such as Microsoft Access, Excel spreadsheets, and even XML data.

This chapter shows you the basics of working with files using the .NET Framework, including how to work with streams, the basic unit of input/output (I/O) used throughout the entire framework. Finally, you'll see some more advanced file I/O techniques such as asynchronous I/O and the use of isolated storage to provide a secure, isolated location for your application's data.