Access SQLXML Technology from .NET Apps

With the release of the SQLXML Managed Classes, which Microsoft shipped with SQLXML in March of this year, developers now can access SQLXML technology (XML views, templates, XPath, XQuery) from .NET applications. This function enables .NET application developers to retrieve data from relational databases as if they were big XML documents. They no longer have to transform the results of a query into XML--SQLXML performs this operation automatically.

Figure 1 illustrates the SQLXML concept.

Figure 1: The Concept Behind SQLXML

Figure 2 shows the basic architecture of the SQLXML Managed Classes.

Figure 2: The Architecture of the SQLXML Managed Classes

As you can see from Figure 2, all the classes are embedded into ADO.NET, so if you know how to use ADO.NET, you dont need to learn anything else to use the SQLXML Managed Classes.

If you have already worked with ADO.NET, youll love the dataset object as well. It is an in-memory representation of a database. Once you get data from a database into this object, you no longer need a connection to the underlying database. You can access the data, modify it, and finally update the database with your changes. Also, with no connection needed, you can pass data through the tiers of your application without any performance and scalability problems.

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