Learn SQL Server XML Tutorial

From SQL Server 2000 onwards, a lot more support and functionality for XML was included in the product.  Some of this functionality includes accessing SQL Server using HTTP and new OLAP services (now called Analysis Services).  But the majority of the new functionality focuses on supporting XML.  This new functionality includes the ability to read and write XML data, support for XDR schemas, and XPath

This tutorial will show you the different methods of retrieving XML from SQL Server, how to control how the data is returned, and then discuss how to navigate through the returned results.  You will also learn ways of viewing SQL Server tables from an XML perspective.  From there you’ll learn how to load data into SQL Server using XML natively, including real-time over HTTP. 

Most of the topics covered today are straight out of the box functionality.  However, a couple of things are not.  Functionality such as Updategrams and XML Bulk Load require an extra installation.  This file, XML for SQL Server Web Release 1, is included with this tutorial (or it can also be downloaded from the Microsoft website). Later on in the tutorial when we discuss Updategrams and Bulk Load we will also walk through the installation of this file.