The book, "Professional SQL Server 2000 XML," is yet another title in the comprehensive "Programmer to Programmer" series from Wrox Press. It is a "hands on" coding text, and one that is written specifically for developers who have experience with SQL Server 2000, and in particular, T-SQL. Although some prior exposure to XML would be helpful, the books opening chapter provides an introduction to XML. The basics covered include the structure of XML documents, the Document Object Model (DOM), the difference between well-formed XML and valid XML, Document Type Definitions (DTDs), XML schemas (an alternative to DTDs), XML for data exchange; and the use of eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT) to transform XML.
The remainder of the book is divided into nine chapters and five case studies. The programming language requirements for each case study vary, but to tackle them all successfully, you will require the following software on your development machine: VB 6, ASP, C++ 6, and C#. However, the book is structured in such a way that you can read only the chapters and ignore the case studies, if you so wish.
The second chapter contains an overview of the XML capabilities of SQL Server 2000, with an emphasis on some of the XML-specific tools available to developers (thanks to the XML Web release patch). The next chapter introduces readers to the "FOR XML" clause of the "SELECT" command. The importance of "FOR XML" is that XML can now be returned as the result of a query instead of the traditional rowset. The chapter discusses variations of the clause, including "RAW," "AUTO," and "EXPLICIT."
Chapter 4 explains how you can deploy the OPENXML function in SQL Server 2000 to update the data in databases by conveniently using information that's contained in a source XML document. Chapter 5 turns the spotlight on XML-Data Reduced (XDR) schemas. You can use these schemas to move data in the opposite direction to that of the OPENXML function; that is, to extract XML data stored in SQL Server 2000 databases. The next chapter is devoted to XSD schemas, the proposed XML schema definition standard being developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Although XSD is not currently supported in SQL Server, all the dozen authors of "Professional SQL Server 2000 XML" felt that it was too important a topic not to include in their book.
Chapter 7 is a study of XML templates and XML views. The power of XML views is that they provide a mechanism for describing SQL Server tables from an XML perspective. In the next chapter, the discussion turns to XPath, a navigational query language used to find data within XML documents.
To give you an idea how the theory that's been presented in the text so far can be applied in a practical manner, here are the titles of each case study, along with a brief description of design goals and type of material covered:
- Enhancing legacy applications with XML: Not often are companies willing to dump an existing application and rewrite everything from scratch. This case study looks at an achievable alternative, that of integrating and enhancing a legacy application through the use of XML, but without degrading performance in the process.
- An order entry system using VB and XML: In this case study, where Visual Basic is the chosen development environment, XML is used to represent the data in an n-tier application framework. Interestingly, you can download two versions of the project from the book's companion site. The first one consists of just the basic framework (no code included); the second one is the complete version (along with all the SQL scripts and XML samples).
- Creating an XML reporting system: The goal of this case study is to create a reporting system that meets end users' needs through the combined use of the following technologies: the XML capabilities of SQL Server 2000, XSL, ASP, Microsoft Data Access Components, and Visual InterDev. The case study examines the typical problems associated with the client-server design of reporting systems.
- SOAP: According to the authors, Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) is used to "send messages encoded in XML from client to server and vice-versa." This case study involves the deployment of SOAP technology to maintain stock levels on the central server of a construction equipment rental company that has a number of depots. Note too, that for any readers interested in the future of SOAP, the last section of this case study contains a small collection of Web resources that provide additional information about the technology.
- A .NET case study: The books final case study deals with the migration of a Visual Studio 6.0 application, in which the FOR XML and OPENXML features of XML are used, to Microsoft .NET (using Visual Studio .NET and the .NET framework). The significant point that the authors raise with this case study is that "developers should not be intimidated or overwhelmed by Microsoft's .NET initiative."
"Professional SQL Server 2000 XML" concludes with three appendices. The first appendix, "Creating and configuring virtual directories," steps readers through the process of using Internet Information Services (IIS) to configuring a virtual directory thats ready for use by SQL Server. It's then possible to use XML templates and XPath queries, as well as SQL queries from within the URL of a site. The appendix contains an ample number of screen shots to assist in the explanation. The next appendix is an overview of the Microsoft XML View Mapper, a tool used in the creation of XML View schemas from SQL Server 2000 database schemas. The third and final appendix is a short list of the enhancements that have been included in the Web release 2 - Beta 1 version of SQL Server 2000.
To maximize your use of this book, you'll need the following software on your system: SQL Server 2000; XML for SQL Server 2000 Web release 1 (chapters 9 and 10 of the book contain a detailed explanation of this release, including its two new features, "Updategrams" and "Bulk Load," and the address of the Web site where you can download it); and Microsoft XML View Mapper 1.0.
Should you read this book? The answer is "yes" if you meet the following two criteria. First, you are an experienced SQL Server developer. Second, your company has nominated you as the person to take the data that's stored in its SQL Server 2000 databases and to make it available using XML technology.
To find out more about "Professional SQL Server 2000 XML," visit the publishers Web site (http://www.wrox.com), click the "SQL Server" link near the top of the home page, and scroll down until you find the link for this book. When you click the link, you'll be able to read an overview of the book, browse its table of contents, read a sample chapter, and download the code that's been used throughout the text. Another resource from Wrox that you can take advantage of is its P2P site (http://p2p.wrox.com). This site is an online meeting place for programmers to discuss coding and development issues. When I recently logged in there, more than 35,000 programmers had registered with the site.
Authors: Karli Watson, Paul J. Burke, et al
Publisher: Wrox Press
Published: June 2001
ISBN: 1861005466
Paperback 594 pages
Price: $49.99