Installing the XML For SQL Server 2000 Web Release

You can download the XML For SQL Server 2000 Web Release from the Downloads section of the MSDN Web site. The download consists of a single file named XML For SQL.exe. When you run this program on a computer with SQL Server 2000 installed, the extra XML-related tools will be added to the installation.

Once you’ve installed the update, you can open the documentation for the XML For SQL Server 2000 Web Release from the Microsoft SQL Server XML Tools program group. This documentation tells you about the XML-related enhancements to SQL Server, including updategrams and the XML bulk load component.

XML For SQL Server 2000 Web Release 1 at a Glance

So what exactly do you get for your trouble? The XML For SQL Server 2000 Web Release includes a number of improvements to the XML-related functionality in SQL Server 2000.

• Updategrams Support for updategrams means that you can use XML template-like documents to insert, update, and delete data in a SQL Server database. The Settings tab of the Virtual Directory Properties dialog box in the Configure SQL XML Support In IIS tool is updated to allow updategrams to be posted to a SQLISAPI virtual directory.
• The bulk load component The bulk load component is a scriptable COM component with which you can import large volumes of XML data into a database more efficiently than you can using the OpenXML function.
• SQL data type support for schemas In a standard SQL Server 2000 installation, annotated schemas support the sql:datatype annotation for binary data such as image or text. The XML For SQL Server 2000 Web Release adds support for all SQL Server built-in data types, including varchar, money, integer, and so on. This improved data type support is especially useful when you’re bulk-loading data into a SQL Server database using the bulk load component.
• Template enhancements The nullvalue attribute is added to the XML-SQL namespace used in templates. This inclusion allows you to specify a parameter value that represents NULL in the header of a template. For example, you could include the annotation sql:nullvalue="none" in the header of a template and pass NULL to any of the parameters by specifying none. The is-xml attribute is also added to the namespace, allowing you to indicate that a string parameter containing XML characters (such as <) is to be treated as text rather than XML; you accomplish this task by including the annotation sql:is-xml="0" in a param element.

In the rest of this chapter, I’ll describe how you can use the two main features of the XML For SQL Server 2000 Web Release (updategrams and the bulk load component) to build an XML-based application.