Using XPath in C#.NET

Question

I am planning to use XPath to query an XML file. Can you please point me to a link which states the advantages of using XPath? Will the use of XPath improve performance?

I am using .NET Framework 2.0. At present I am iterating through the node.

XmlReaderSettings settings = new XmlReaderSettings();
settings.IgnoreWhitespace = true;
XmlReader reader = XmlReader.Create("mydata.xml", settings);
XmlReader inner;
while (reader.Read())
{
if (reader.Name == "xyz" && reader.NodeType == XmlNodeType.Element)
{
    inner = reader.ReadSubtree();
    inner.Skip();
    inner.Read();
    ......... //some changes to node
    inner.Close();
}
}
reader.Close();

Answer 1

I've heard great things about LINQ to XML. It appears to perform even better than xPath according to the blog.dreamlabsolutions.com link below.

Code Sample on LINQ to XML Query from blogs.block4.net:

var query = from c in xmlFile.Elements("book")
            where (string)c.Attribute("checked-out").Value == "false"            
            select c;

foreach (var book in query)
{
   Console.WriteLine("\”{0}\” is available", book.Element("title").Value);
}

Further Reading:
* xml.com
* weblogs.asp.net
* blog.dreamlabsolutions.com