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Based on the average review scores this book got, I decided to acquire an electronic copy of it through DevX's online bookshelf. After reading this book, I feel cheated. You see, at about the middle point of my reading, I wanted to look up SQL Server 2000's Books Online (BOL) - which comes free with SQL Server install - for details of a certain item. Lo and behold, most of the examples and text in this book closely resembles the BOL's "XML and Internet Support" section. In fact, a lot of the content is almost verbatum copy. In order to make the book look different from the BOL, the author seemed to shuffle the content a little bit and tried to describe the technical points from a different approach than BOL. But he apparently did not do a good job of it. After going through this book, I still feel not clear on a lot of the technical details. So I went back to the BOL and got my questions answered there. It seemed to me that the author manufactured - I don't want to use the word WROTE - the book just to make some quick money. The only merit I'm willing to give this book is its chapters that summarize XSLT and XDR Schema.
Just Excellent
I haven't finished reading this yet but I just had to put it down real quick so I could tell eveyone how useful this book is. I'll warn you up front, you have to take the time to read this - it is packed with information. The XSLT chapter goes into great detail and takes the confusion surrounding this topic and blows it away. The rest are very informative, too. This book is far better than the Henderson/Soukup Guru's guide. Buy this one and you won't need anything else.
Hundreds of hands-on examples
XML And SQL Server 2000 provides an informative, comprehensive, invaluable discussion of SQL Server 2000's new time-saving, easy-to-use XML capabilities. Following a brief discussion on XSL/XSLT and DTD's, users will find hundreds of hands-on examples that can be utilized in day-to-day operations in such areas as IIS Directories, http, xml views and xml schemas, openxml, and much more.
A Readable Guide
In this book, John Griffin has provided a readable discussion of how to incorporate XML into your SQL Server 2000 applications. Starting with a gentle introduction to both XML and XSLT, John quickly moves into incorporating SQL Server 2000 into web applications, including discussion on Virtual Directories, executing SQL via HTTP, and Forms based queries. He then moves onto advanced topics like XDR Schemas and XPath, before concluding with chapters on FOR XML and OPEN XML, which are both important Microsoft extensions to SQL that are explicitly designed to improve the performance of SQL Server 2000 with XML.
One of the only disappointments I had with this book was the neglect of Web Services, which I would expect would be a major reason for using XML with SQL Server 2000. This is not a major criticism, and might be addressed in later editions of the book. In any event, any serious SQL Server 2000 developer should take a look at this book.
