Chapter 2: Designing Database Queries

Overview

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 is designed to handle small to large enterprise-level databases. However, it does little good to have data in a database unless you know how to extract portions of that data. It is critical for every database developer and administrator to know how to query a SQL Server 2005 database.

Lesson 1 will begin with writing database queries, which covers everything from query basics to writing functions and remote queries. Lesson 2 will move on to writing specialized queries, which involves using query hints and writing full-text queries. Lesson 3 will feature retrieving data from Extensible Markup Language (XML) sources and will cover how to write an XQuery (an XML querying language) expression.

Exam objectives in this chapter:

• Write and modify queries.

  • Write queries.

  • Modify queries to improve query performance.

• Design queries for retrieving data from XML sources.

  • Select the correct attributes.

  • Select the correct nodes.

  • Filter by values of attributes and values of elements.

  • Include relational data, such as columns and variables, in the result of an XQuery expression.

  • Include XML attribute or node values in a tabular result set.

  • Update, insert, or delete relational data based on XML parameters to stored procedures.

  • Debug and troubleshoot queries against XML data sources.