SQL Server 2000 Stored Procedure & XML Programming 2-nd Edition

Welcome to SQL Server 2000 Stored Procedure & XML Programming.
This book identifies and describes the key concepts, tips and techniques,
and best practices the professional developer needs to master in order to
take full advantage of stored procedures in the SQL Server development environment.
Microsoft SQL Server is the relational database management system (RDBMS)
of choice for a growing number of business organizations and professional database
and application developers. The reasons for this growing popularity are quite simple:

Integration No other RDBMS integrates as fully and cleanly with applications
and integrated development environments (IDEs) designed to run on the ubiquitous
Microsoft Windows platform.

Ease of use SQL Server provides Enterprise Manager and Query Analyzer to
allow DBAs to design, develop, deploy, and manage database solutions. These
interfaces automate repetitive tasks and provide simple ways to perform complex
operations. SQL Server integrates seamlessly with development tools such as
Visual Basic and Visual Interdev to allow developers to design and develop
client/server or Internet solutions rapidly.

Flexibility You can use different features within SQL Server to achieve
similar results. (Of course, with flexibility comes choice, and choice means
that the developer is responsible for choosing the most appropriate means of
achieving an end. This book will help you make those choices.)

Power SQL Server makes large amounts of data available to large numbers
of concurrent users while maintaining the security and integrity of the data. At
the time of this writing, SQL Server holds the record in TPC-C benchmark
tests for performance and price/performance (see www.tpc.org).

When I began working with SQL Server, reference materials relating to the
development and deployment of stored procedures were rare and not particularly
helpful. These materials described basic concepts, but the examples presented were
often trivial and not complex enough to be applied to real-world situations in which
aspects such as error handling, debugging, naming conventions, and interfaces to other
applications are critical. As the legions of application developers and development
DBAs migrate from Microsoft Access to SQL Server, and as SQL Server becomes
the leading database for mission-critical application development, the need for more
advanced work on SQL Server stored procedures becomes even more critical.