Professional SQL Server 2005 XML Programmer to Programmer



  • Discusses SQL Server 2005 XML from the server and client sides
  • Examines using XSLT to render the XML data that is retrieved from SQL Server, particularly for ASP.NET
  • Addresses SQL Server relationship with schemas, SOAP, XML security, and .NET
  • Makes extensive use of examples to solve problems that programmers face on an everyday basis and features Server 2005 XML best practices

User Ratings and Reviews

3 Stars lazy edition
I didn’t read all of it but the code samples in the first 3 chapters has a terrible mismatch with variables names. Some of the chapter’s paragraphs are repeating them self.

I got the feeling they get to rush in this edition.

But you should take into account that i’m very pedantic.

Search inside before you make your decision.

1 Star examples and rest of book do not correlate.
Just been thru Chapter 1 - what is in the book and the snippets of the code that follow do not correlate. This is just like a developer code, wrote something and threw it across the wall for testing, never matters if the code matches requirements or not.

5 Stars Clear, complete and well done book
The web was designed for people to read what was stored at a computer somewhere else. After the web was set up, it wasn’t long before people wanted to extract information from one system to incorporate into their own web page.

For a quick example, go to www.books-on-line.com. At the upper left is a little box for you to enter an ISBN number. Put in a number and click on Get Prices. Then what happens is that the Books-On-Line web site goes to Amazon and gets up to the minute information and displays it back to you in a simple format.

As part of their ASP.NET design effort, Microsoft has added a new datatype called XML to their SQL Server database. This book is on using this new feature. It describes the data type. Talks about constraints, schemas, all the things you would expect. It then talks about the integrated features to facilitate the generation of XML code that can be sent out over the web.

XML is a major new concept in distributed computing. The book covers this aspect of the Microsoft approach and does so very well. It is complete and thorough and very well written.

2 Stars Too many bugs in the codes.
I bought this book several months ago and was disappointed. One of the problem is that I am consistently debugging the codes. I am at Chapter 5 now and have spent numerous times googling to try to understand what is the correct syntex for some codes, such as using xml method for column-level contraints, which was demonstated in the book, but does not work. The other thing I don’t like is the lack of explanation about the code examples. Many times, a code was throw out without clear explantion, such as how cross apply, outer apply works.

4 Stars You Need this Book
If you are considering using XML in SQL Server 2005, this book will pay for itself quickly. The clear examples of creating XML Schema collections, altering them, etc. are very helpful.

The only problem with this book is that SQL Server 2005 does not fully support XML Schemas. Because this book was written using a beta product (I believe) perhaps the author could not have know exactly how the final version would shake out. However, partial support of standards is important to any developer. You often find out only by trial and error what is supported and what isn’t. The Wrox web site offers nothing of the kind for this book. So buy this book, but be aware if you are using complex XML Schemas there may be some surprises (e.g., notation not supported).

Buy/More Info

Next Post: Programming SQL Server 2005