xml-dev - XML in .NET - more than just SOAP?

[Michael Champion <Mike.Champion@softwareag-usa.com>]

I didn't get a reply to a previous query, which was buried deep in another
message, about the role of XML in Microsoft's .NET initiative.  I'm not
ranting, trying to flame .NET, or questioning C# ...  just trying to figure
out the answer to one question:

A typical article on .NET in the trade press says something like
"Microsoft is basing everything on the Extensible Markup Language" (in this
case, I'm quoting from http://www.iweek.com/author/redmond.htm)  I've read
the .NET whitepaper, various PDC presentations, and much punditry about .NET
and the only XML-related components of .NET I hear about are related to
SOAP.  Is that all that XML has to contribute to the publicly stated vision
of .NET, or am I missing something?

More specifically, is there anything about publishing XML formats for the
actual content of Office documents (including spreadsheets, PPT slides,
etc.)? What about WebForms; is that an XML technology? Can 3rd parties
interoperate with .NET components in any way other than via the
"intermediate language" and its virtual machine?  One could imagine
interoperating with .NET services by exchanging XML "document" data rather
than RPC calls with representations of proprietary objects encoded in SOAP,
but I'm not finding any direct references to this.

Thanks for any help answering this.