Intended Audience:
XML Databases is
intended to serve the programmer community.
Like all WroX Press books, this title is written
by programmers and is clearly not a
beginner text. The book does present some
conceptual issues, but the major focus of
the book is on development and
implementation. The authors assume
that the reader is already familiar with
XML. If the reader doesn't not
understand XML, they advise that some
other book be used to supply this
background information. This book is
especially targeted toward data analysts,
relational database developers, and XML
developers. This book examines the
issues involved in exposing database
structures to XML, how to create XML from
database table structures, and then how to
store XML in databases. Toolkit
technologies such as SAX, DOM, and XSLT
will also be discussed.
Summary:
This book is divided into five main
sections. In addition two appendices
are provided for those who need more
detail on core concepts assumed within the
text of the chapters.
Section 1 of the book concentrates on
Design Techniques. This section
provides best-practices in design
techniques. First we look at good
XML design techniques. Next we apply
these techniques in representing
pre-existing relational designs. The
third chapter focuses on designing
database structures for existing XML (or
SGML) data. Here the challenge is to
handle content that is far less structured
than the relational database world
expects. Strategies for ANY and
MIXED are examined. Finally a
chapter that discusses principles of
standards design for data standards.
Section 2 of the book focuses on XML
Technologies that enable developers to
develop XML appliations.
Technologies include DOM, SAX, XSLT, XPath,
XLink and XML Schemas. Since this
book was written just before XML Schema
became a final Recommendation of W3C, care
should be taken to reference the
Recommendation, itself. In addition, brief
attention is given to XPointer,
XBase, XInclude, and XML Query. Flat
files are also discussed because these is
often encountered in the database
environment.
Section 3 of this book looks at two
specific data access technologies.
The first is ADO. Here the authors
concentrate on how to use ADO to make data
available as XML. SQL Server 2000 is
highlighted both from an ADO point-of-view
and from the XML Support point of view.
The second data access technology
examined in XML Databases is JDBC and
looks at how XML can be used to enhance
JDBC and VISA Versa. Generating XML
from a JDBC data source and updating a
JDBC data source with XML are highlighted.
The fourth section of XML Databases
focuses on common applications of
XML. These include data warehousing,
data transmission and marshalling and
presentation. Strategies for
addressing each kind of application are
presented.
The final section of the book consists
of two, in-depth case studies. Thsse
show how to put it all together, from
design to technology to application.
SQL Server and DB Prism are highlighted in
these case studies.
Two useful appendices provide primers
that are required for XML Databases.
One primer focuses on XML and the other on
Databases. Readers that have a
strength in one over the other technology
will find the primers help the use the
text as intended.
XML Databases is really the text for
those tackling the problem of integrating
XML and databases. According to the
authors, "If you think about the
structure of the two (XML and databases),
there is a lot to learn when using these
two technologies side by side. This
book provides strategies to do just that
and is a "must read" for anyone
working in this mixed environment.
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