Manipulating XML Data in SQL Server

When the average database developer is obliged to manipulate XML, either shredding it into relational format, or creating it from SQL, it is often done 'at arms length'. A shame, since effective use of techniques that go beyond the basics can save much code,

Getting Started With XML Indexes

XML Indexes make a huge difference to the speed of XML queries, as Seth Delconte explains; and demonstrates by running queries against half a million XML employee records. The execution time of a query is reduced from two seconds to being too quick to measure, purely by creating the right type of secondary index for the query.

SQL Server 2008 and XML

Basics of XML and SQL Server, Part 4: Create an XML invoice with SSIS

This article demonstrates how to build an SSIS package that generates an XML invoice document from data stored in SQL Server and saves it to an XML file.

Basics of XML and SQL Server, Part 3: Transform and Shred XML in SSIS

This SSIS package performs multiple XSL transformations on an XML document, then shreds the transformed document and inserts its data into a SQL Server table.

Basics of XML and SQL Server, Part 2: Shredding XML

In Part 2 of this series we will shred an XML document and insert its records into a SQL Server table using both the OpenXML and XQuery methods.

Basics of XML and SQL Server, Part 1: Streaming XML

This article demonstrates how to generate an XML stream from SQL Server using the 'FOR XML PATH' statement, and how to explore that XML stream interactively using an XSL transformation.

Converting String Data to XML and XML to String Data

In general XML documents or fragments are held in strings as text markup. In SQL Server, XML variables and columns are instead tokenised to allow rapid access to the data within. This is fine, but can cause some odd problems, such as ' entitization'. What do you do if you need to preserve the formatting? As usual Rob Sheldon comes to our aid.

Using XML to pass lists as parameters in SQL Server

Every so often, the question comes up on forums of how to pass a list as a parameter to a SQL procedure or function. Phil Factor provides some examples using XML, and tests them against other popular methods.

Incorporating XML into your Database Objects

XML data can become a full participant in a SQL Server Database, and can be used in views, functions, check constraints, computed columns and defaults. Views and table-valued functions can be used to provide a tabular view of XML data that can be used in SQL Expressions. Robert Sheldon explains how.