Posted by serge on 07/17/05 14:56

I have only started learning XML 3-4 days ago. I ran into a
newsgroup post by chance where someone was using XML
to transfer data to SQL Server.

http://visualbasic.ittoolbox.com/groups/groups.asp?v=sql-server-l&i=780204

So that made me wonder why I wouldn't do that?
I've been working on this since then and slowly learning more
about SELECT * FROM TABLE FOR XML AUTO, XML,
DTD, XSD files, now I need to learn XDR, I think XDR is
similar to XSD but seems to be aimed for SQL Server.
I'll post some questions on microsoft.public.xml and hopefully
I'll get some answers from people who have already done what
I am trying to do.

But one question I have is if you are using Excel, are you using
it only for the INSERT data part? What about using the same
or another Excel file to hold the table's column names and data
types?

At this point in time (with my very little knowledge of XML) I
believe it wouldn't be a good idea to replace the sql files holding
the table structures with XML files holding the equivalent in terms
of the columns and its data types. I think that is more difficult
for someone to make table changes.

Here are three links for free XML Editors.
http://www.xmlcooktop.com/

I like these two as they will show you the data in grids:

http://symbolclick.com/index.htm
http://www.xmlfox.com/download.htm


Thanks



> I know too little XML to say that whether this is good or bad. I didn't
> know that there were XML Editors where you could edit grid cells.
>
> I recognize the problem, though, because we have plenty of such files in
> our shop. Our solution to the problem is Excel. (Which can be saved as
> XML, but we don't do that currently.) Then we have a tool that reads the
> Excel book and generates an INSERT-file from it. That file, by the way,
> does
> not include any INSERT statements, but calls to a stored procedure that
> will insert or update (or delete), so that the files easily can be rerun.

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