Pluses in this book include the chapter on FOR XML and the chapter on OPENXML. I believe this is the area where most developers will like to spend the most of their time. I would have liked to see FOR XML EXPLICIT get a bit more coverage, as this is the bear, but the examples are workable, so I cannot complain too much.
I also enjoyed the updategram chapter. This ability was highly touted in Microsoft marketing events, but took quite some time to surface. The case studies help put the technology in a real world light.
The negatives are few. First, I believe far too much time is spent on XSD schemas, at least with the way it is presented. In a real world scenario, you are probably going to pull the schema from an existing database, which makes this material NULL and void. If you do get into writing XSD, you will find this material far too shallow.
I also would have liked to see how this technology could blend with the direction Microsoft is pushing .NET. I realize this is not the topic of the book, so I have not hammered on this. Perhaps the next book will be SQL Server 2000 and .NET?
Building extensively on the new features introduced in Professional SQL Server 2000 (1-861004-48-6) this book goes beyond just the key issues and provides blanket in-depth coverage of advanced topics, including both XDR and XSD schemas (support for which has been added in the new Web Release 2), and additions in Web Release 1, such as Updategrams and XML Bulk Load. This book also includes five real-world case studies that show exactly how the XML capabilities of SQL Server 2000 can best be exploited with technologies as diverse as ASP, C#, and SOAP.
This book covers: An introduction to XML How to retrieve XML data from your database using FOR XML Exposing XML documents as relational resultsets using OPENXML Using XDR and XSD schemas to retrieve results through HTTP requests Describing SQL Server tables using XML Views A detailed discussion of the use of XPath queries with SQL Server Modifying your database with Updategrams Importing XML documents into your database with XML Bulk Load An overview of the new features provided with Beta 1 of Web Release 2