Annotated Schemata - Providing XML Views over Relational Data

Michael Rys
Microsoft
mrys@microsoft.com

Abstract

When building loosely-coupled systems using XML based data interchanges, one of the most important aspects is the common schema that describes the interchange data. Since these schemas normally do not directly map to the logical design of existing data in the databases that are used to store and generate the messages, providing a simple-to-use mapping mechanism between the public XML schemata and the private database schemata becomes an important aspect of enabling XML access to existing databases.

This talk will present a schema-based mapping mechanism that uses mapping annotations as a powerful way to provide updatable, virtual XML views over relational data. I will present the annotation mechanism provided as part of SQLServer 2000's XML support to define XML views over relational systems and will show how these views are queried using an XPath language subset, how one can specify updates using an updategram language and how data can be loaded in bulk into the database through the view. The presentation will include live presentations of these principles.

Biography

After finishing his Ph.D. at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich in the area of database systems, Michael went to Stanford University for a Postdoc, where he worked on semi-structured databases and distributed heterogeneous information integration. In late 1998, he joined Microsoft Corporation in Redmond where he is now a Program Manager responsible for SQL Server's XML Technologies. Michael is also a member of the W3C XML Query working group and is a member of ACM and IEEE.