XML and Relational Databases

It is very useful to move data between the XML and Relational database domains. It is especially powerful to perform these actions by combining XML and SQL declarative technologies. It is hard not to overstate the power, speed, flexibility and maintainability of using XML transforms and processes to generate and execute SQL queries.

A number of services are provided that allow SQL operations to be performed on a database. In all cases the results and query result sets are returned as XML documents.

• sqlQuery Query a database with an SQL statement
• sqlUpdate Update a database with an SQL statement
• sqlBatch Batch process SQL statements

A number of services are provided that allow resources to be stored and retrieved to/from Blob RDBMS fields. The resources are processed as binary streams.

• sqlQueryBlob retrieve Blob objects from an RDBMS
• sqlUpdateBlob store a resource as a Blob in an RDBMS

In addition to the primary operations a number of utilities are provided for working with XML and SQL.

• SQLEscapeXML escape XML text elements for use in SQL statements
• SQLEncodeElement encode/decode XML fragments for storing/retrieving to/from an database text field

Guide

An indepth guide to relational database integration is available.

• RDBMS Guide