In addition to being a tutorial for learning how to use XML as an effective way to represent and transmit data across the Web, Professional XML Databases also covers how to work with XML in the current generation of Microsoft tools, like Internet Explorer and SQL Server 2000. For any developer or manager who works with databases on the Windows platform, this book shows how you can delve into XML today for real projects.
With endorsements from virtually every major vendor (including Microsoft), XML looks to be a compelling standard for sharing corporate data between organizations. Professional XML Databases examines how to integrate XML into your organization's database infrastructure. Early sections concentrate on the rules and strategies for designing effective XML documents (DTDs) that mimic traditional tables (including links between tables). By providing almost a dozen rules on how to do this correctly, the book assures that you'll learn not only the basics of XML syntax but also the correct way to create DTDs that are efficient, easy to maintain, and readable across your business. (Further sections reverse this process and show you how to create database tables based on XML.)
Subsequent sections cover many of the standards and APIs in today's XML, from XML Schemas, the XML W3C Document Object Model (DOM), and the Simple API for XML (SAX), to related standards like XSLT, XPath, and XPointer. A number of books cover these APIs, but this one provides a unique focus by examining Microsoft tools and their support for XML. This means there is coverage of Microsoft ADO (and ADO+, now called ADO.NET) for querying databases and packaging the results as XML. Sections on SQL Server 2000 highlight ways to use XML in this product, both as results and through XML views.
Closing sections explore options for working with XML for data warehousing and transmitting data efficiently across organizations. Sections on Java and the DB Prism (an open-source XML framework) help give this book a perspective that extends beyond the Microsoft platform.
For any database developer or designer who needs to architect XML documents in order to share data in real projects, this advanced treatise on the right way to define and use XML will prove highly valuable. For anyone who uses SQL Server 2000, this book also points the way toward using XML standards in actual shipping products on the Microsoft platform.