Chapter 6: SQL Server and XML

Overview

As with Oracle Database, there is immense capability in SQL Server database for utilizing the power of XML. This chapter covers only XML as directly related to SQL Server. In other words, you will examine how XML documents can be created, accessed, and manipulated directly from within an SQL Server database. You will be presented with various specialized techniques and facilities available to SQL Server. And as you will see, having read the previous chapter covering XML in Oracle Database, much of the XML facilities available in SQL Server are common to Oracle Database as well.

SQL Server database software can be downloaded from www.microsoft.com , or it can be purchased on CD-ROM (for a nominal shipping and handling fee), on a trial basis. You can try out all the examples in this chapter. There are no Try It Out sections in this chapter as specific database software may not necessarily be available to you at the time of reading this book. Reading this book is not dependent on your having software for any particular database.

In this chapter you learn about:

• The XML data type for storing XML documents within an SQL Server database

• The methods available to the XML data type

• Creating XML documents

• Relational tables and directly converting into XML structured data

• Adding XML document data to an SQL Server database table

• Scanning through and retrieving data from XML data stored in an SQL Server database

• Changing the content of XML data stored in an SQL Server database

• Using XSD and SQL Server schema collections to impose structure and relationships into XML data