Microsoft XML - General XML Data Question

Author

General XML Data Question

Jason

2005-02-16, 6:37 pm

I want to begin using standard XML tools to transform data. Basically I get
data in several formats (Access, text, dbf, whatever) and have to verify and
standardize it and put it into a Microsoft SQL database. Do I need to create
XSLTs? XSDs? I don't know.

I'm looking for recommendations regarding software, what technologies I need
to read up on, etc. Decent mapping software and the ability to do low-level
data checking/modification (like manually analyzing a date-string to check
or standardize values) are important. I also want my transformations to be
standards-compliant so that they will work with different platforms or
data-consumers (different SQLs, Access, etc.).

Thanks for any advice.

Han

2005-02-17, 4:32 am

Technology is not yet there if you mean seamless data consumption with
standard schema from heterogenous platforms/apps.
The goal assumes "native" support of XML in each data stores. Only SQL2005,
now in beta, does that.

--
Pohwan Han. Seoul. Have a nice day.
"Jason" <someone@microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:u5V1gLDFFHA.2568@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
>I want to begin using standard XML tools to transform data. Basically I get
>data in several formats (Access, text, dbf, whatever) and have to verify
>and standardize it and put it into a Microsoft SQL database. Do I need to
>create XSLTs? XSDs? I don't know.
>
> I'm looking for recommendations regarding software, what technologies I
> need to read up on, etc. Decent mapping software and the ability to do
> low-level data checking/modification (like manually analyzing a
> date-string to check or standardize values) are important. I also want my
> transformations to be standards-compliant so that they will work with
> different platforms or data-consumers (different SQLs, Access, etc.).
>
> Thanks for any advice.
>

WizyDig

2005-02-17, 6:44 pm

C# is a strongly typed langauge and can provide the low level
verification you are looking for. If you know the schema you can use
what is know as a "strongly typed" data set to read in the xml. If the
xml you recieve varies from the schema an exception is thrown with a
discription of the error. Once the data is in the data set you can use
a data adapter object to load the data into the data base of choice.
There are "Providers" for SQL server 2000, Oracle, mysql and others. If
you need more help with coding your solution i would suggest moving the
discussion to the C# forum.

One advantage of useing C# and SQL server would be that with SQL server
2005 you can write Data Transformation Services(DTS)packages in C#. You
would be able to port you code to SQL server 2005 and then schedule the
job in SQL server. If you plan to be using SQL server 2005 you should
learn C# anyway.

I hope that helps.

Wiz

Always rememeber C# is "Cool"
That was the code name for the C# project at Microsoft.

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