Customer Reviews

Professional XML Databases

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you want to exploit SQL's support for XML, this is THE BOOK to buy. The book does NOT come with a CD, but the code samples can be downloaded from Wrox's site in a zip file. This book is not for the XML or SQL novice, but if you have a rudimentary education in either (as I do, I only started using SQL Server 2000 a couple of weeks ago) then you should be able to follow it.

Finally, a book that covers a different XML approach. This book earns its "Database" title right. Indeed, it has to go some XML basics but this book is hugely focused in bringing a practical Database end for XML instead of only explaining XML.

This book covers some SQL Server 2000 XML capabilities for both input and output; it will go over a series of step on HOW to bring a current database into a XML document with DTD; and in reverse, how to take an XML document and create a relational database with it; it goes over data transmission and marshalling; in short, it goes over many many things that DBA will have to go through.

(** at the moment of this review, January 2001, the Amazon Table of Content is definitely wrong (about some PERL book or something) **)

This is the best book currently available on XML and databases. I especially like that it contains many practical examples. If you're using SQL Server 2000, the chapters on SQL XML are excellent. Even if you're not using that particular database, I think you will find this book a valuable resource.

I read through this book at more of an advanced developer level, so I'm going to treat it from that level.

The chapter on XQuery was great; it answered many of my questions concisely. There is very little information on the web about XQuery outside the W3.org site, so I was surprised to find such high quality information in a book.

XPath is also a newer API that is covered well in this book, giving you enough information to get your project going.

If you're planning to do any kind of development with XML coming in or going out of a relational database, this is an excellent book to buy. I also recommend Professional XML from Wrox and O'Reilly's XML in a nutshell.

But we are working in a mixed environment, so this book was definitely not a be-all-end-all.

The initial (pre-printing) review gave me hope that the information on using XML with MS products would be primarily augmention, but the actual orientation of the book is rather that of preparing engineers with MS experience to use XML with the tools that they have.

Note that many of the code examples use VB.

I would suggest this book as a starting point for MS experienced engineers adding a few XML capabilities to existing databases.

This is good book that outlines the cabalities on an "XML-enabled" database solution, but anyone who really understands XML, realizes there are some databases out there that offer a "NATIVE" XML storage capabilitiy, such as Software AG's Tamino. With the evololution of XML databases, I would think that some of the authors would start discussing the advantages of a Native XML database.

Interesting that you basically ignore native XML DBs. They are the definitive choice in most XML Document Centric environments. While RDBs remain quite strong in XML Data Centric models, they must resort to BLOBs or risk an order of magnitude of sluggishness compared to native XML DBs, such as our GoXML DB. Even with BLOBs, you cannot create a new document from multiple existing documents because of the columnar structure. The lack of a full table of contents when your title is 'Professional XML Databases' is disappointing...

Concerned XML Enthusiast

this is very well written book. the material presented in this book are exhaustive and gets you good insight on how xml would be used with dbms. the chapters 2,3 and 4 are very informatiove as they list ou tthe steps required for converting db table to xml and vice versa.

There are too many people who work just on MS platforms (VB, VC++) or just in the Jave so why for heaven sake one should buy a book talk about the two of them...