Michael Rys - Database Geek of the Week
The Database Geek of the Week is back from vacation! Well, actually, 3 weeks or so in the hospital is not technically a vacation, but you know what I mean. Michael is a Program Manager at Microsoft.
Doug: Where in the SQL Server world do you think XML best fits?
Michael: I think one of the advantages and, to some extent, disadvantages of XML is that it can be used for many different things: as a transport format for data interchange, as a markup document format (for example, XHTML, WordML etc.), as a semi-structured data representation, and so on. The important thing to remember is that all this is data and therefore needs to be integrated with the data management platform – in our case, SQL Server. So XML fits as a transport format for relational data (which inside the database should be still be processed as relational data), but it also enables easier management of semi-structured data inside the database, and allows us to unlock the information inside documents beyond simple full-text search — for example, enabling context sensitive search.
The entire interview is here.
Do you have a candidate for Database Geek of the week? If so, do contact me using the Contact link, or at doug@accessmicrosystems.net