[xquery-talk] SQL Server 2005

[Michael Rys]

To add to what Kent said.

1) I am not going to evangelize functionality that I do not implement...
And it is not my problem if nobody writes about it...

2) No idea. I guess some people use it. However, I know tons of customer
that use FOR XML... (although obviously my sample is skewed).
And there is quite a bit of interest in server-side XML support in the
developer community (My talk about it at the last PDC had 10% of the
conference attend).

3) As Kent says, you should use PATH mode in most cases. EXPLICIT mode
should only be used under the following circumstances:
1. You already have it running...
2. Sometimes it still executes faster than nested FOR XML PATH but not
always.
3. You are a masochist...

Best regards
Michael

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kent Tegels [mailto:ktegels at gmail.com] 
> Sent: Sunday, January 22, 2006 3:00 AM
> To: Ronald Bourret
> Cc: Michael Rys; Frank Cohen; talk at xquery.com
> Subject: Re: [xquery-talk] SQL Server 2005
> 
> > 1) Do your customers even know about SQL/XML? Remarkably 
> little has been
> > written about it on the Web or elsewhere.
> 
> On the whole, probably not, but I'm working on that a few students at
> a time. We cover this in our SQL Server 2005 classes a bit so that a.)
> folks are aware that SQL/XML exists and b.) what MS does is different.
> 
> > 2) Does anybody know how widely SQL/XML functionality is used in the
> > databases that do support it (DB2, Oracle, Sybase, and 
> DataDirect's JDBC
> > driver)? I would certainly use it if I had one of those 
> databases, but
> > the few real-world customers I meet still seem to be 
> writing custom code
> > to construct XML
> 
> Last year I gave a number of talks around the US and this was one of
> the questions I'd ask. Most of these talks were pretty well attended,
> so by that measure, there's a fair amount of interest in the
> technology. A good portion of the folks attending did store XML in
> tables, but they really weren't doing much at the storage engine level
> with that it. I think some folks are starting to want to use XML more
> at the engine level, however, so that's where SQL Server's XML type
> comes into play. Frankly, there's not much point using that datatype
> unless your actually going to use the features like schema-binding,
> XQuery and indexing that go with it.
> .
> > 3) In all fairness, FOR SELECT EXPLICIT is only marginally less ugly
> > than SQL/XML, and neither comes close to XQuery, which is 
> postively fun
> > to write.
> 
> There's so little reason to write explicit queries with SQL Server
> 2005 anyway. Use FOR XML PATH as a direct and "less code, more
> obvious" solution. As to XQuery, I really believe that most SQL Server
> 2005 will choose to write XPath expressions first and resort to the
> FLWOR syntax when the run into a brick wall. That's probably because
> of the folks using the feature today are middleware or client
> developers.
> 
> Thank You,
> 
> Kent Tegels
> Database Curriculum Lead
> Blog: http://staff.develop.com/ktegels
> DevelopMentor -- Advanced Training for Professional Software 
> Developers
>