Michael Rys : XQuery

Update on SQL PASS 2007 Presentations

mrys — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 07:34:00 GMT

I am giving 3 presentations at SQL PASS 2007 in Denver:

Wednesday, September 19th, 9:45am to 11am, room 709:
DBA-317-M The Next Release of Microsoft SQL Server: Beyond Relational
(co-presenting with Kevin Farlee)
Main focus will be the new features in the areas of unstructured and semistructured data management in SQL Server 2008.

Wednesday, September 19th, 1:30pm to 2:45pm, room 709:
AD-407-M Deep Dive into XQuery and XML in Microsoft SQL Server: Common Problems & Best Practice Solutions
This is the same presentation I gave at TechEd 2007, a bit shortened to fit into the timeslot. Focus is on SQL Server 2005 XQuery and XML optimizations, however they also will apply to SQL Server 2008.

Thursday, September 20th, 1:30pm to 2:45pm, room 709:
AD-312-M Building Spatial Application with Microsoft SQL Server
(co-presenting with Isaac Kunen)
This will be an updated presentation of the chalktalk that I gave at TechEd 2007. Main focus is that the demo runs now on the bits that will be shipping :).

We merged the Friday 4pm presentation on managing unstructured and semistructured data (AD-313-M) with the presentation on "Beyond Relational" that Kevin and I will give on Wednesday. Primarily because the two presentations had a large overlap and neither Shan nor Srini were able to attend.

Watch out Europe - Here I come...

mrys — Sat, 26 Nov 2005 12:26:00 GMT

Tomorrow I will be on my way to Europe for the SQL Server Launch Events in Zurich and Lausanne (Switzerland) and Athens (Greece). In Switzerland I will be presenting a specially made presentation on "What's new in SQL Server 2005" that will be more technical than the general launch presentation that I am giving in Athens.

In addition, I will be visiting family, speak at the .Net User Group in Kuesnacht on XQuery and XML in SQL Server 2005, and will give two presentations on SQL Server in general and XML in particular at the Swedish SQL Server User group in Stockholm on December 8.

If you are around, feel free to stop by and say hi.

XQuery 1.0 and XSLT 2.0 are now in Candidate Recommendation

mrys — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 21:14:00 GMT

Finally, after 6 years of hard work, the W3C has released the Candidate Recommendation specs for XQuery 1.0, XPath 2.0 and XSLT 2.0. Does this mean that the recommendations are done? No, not yet. But it means that we reached an important milestone. Now everyone is officially invited to implement the specs, run the test suite, and provide feedback. Within the next couple of months, we will see which ones of the features will have at least two implementations with the same result and what may be underspecified or will not find an implementation.

Since we now ship SQL Server 2005 with its XQuery subset and are planning the next release, I would like to encourage you to check out the XQuery specs (including the Full-Text specs) and let me know what functionality you want us to implement with the highest priority in the next release of SQL Server.

PDC 2005 Videos and Slides and demos are now online

mrys — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 04:30:00 GMT

The PDC 2005 videos are now online (via http://blogs.msdn.com/mswanson/archive/2005/10/24/484434.aspx). Oleg has distilled the XML and language specific presentations.

And finally, from that list, here is the pointer to my presentation:

DAT405: SQL Server 2005: Deep Dive on XML and XQuery
Speaker: Michael Rys
Managing semi-structured and markup data is becoming an increasingly important aspect of data management. Besides storing XML natively in a database such as SQL Server 2005, it is as important to extract the information stored in the XML documents. This presentation dives into XQuery, the emerging standard to query and manipulate XML data; it discusses how SQL Server 2005 supports XQuery and XML DML; how to use these technologies to address typical scenarios and how to optimize for performance.
Download Presentation Download PowerPoint Download materials

XML related changes to the September CTP

mrys — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 05:16:00 GMT

While we are less than a month away from the official launch week of SQL Server 2005, I am still providing you with the promissed change list for the XML area in SQL Server 2005's September CTP. And please accept my apology for the delay.

Please continue here for the changes.

Presentations at SQLPASS 2005 (Grapevine, Tx)

mrys — Wed, 28 Sep 2005 19:35:00 GMT

As many others in the SQL Server community, I have travelled to Grapevine, Texas to attend and present at this year's SQLPASS 2005 (site seems down while I write this). Since some people were unable to attend or had to leave early, I am now giving an additional presentation on Friday:

Friday, September 30
228: SQL Server 2005: Deep Dive Into XQuery
Michael Rys, Microsoft Corporation
4:00 p.m. – 5:15 p.m.; Texas 1-2

Note that this presentation is basically my PDC 2005 talk, that I will slightly adjust on the fly depending on how many people have attended the other XML and XQuery related talks. The goal is to make it complementary (while providing a bit of overlap for those that have not seen the other presentations).

Please continue here for a quick overview of talks at SQLPASS that should be of interest in people that want to understand the XML support in SQL Server 2005...

The innards of our XQuery implementation

mrys — Thu, 22 Sep 2005 07:55:00 GMT

Our VLDB 2005 paper on the innards of our XQuery implementation is now available online. Shankar gave the presentation in Trondheim. As the previous conference papers, this paper gives an in-depth look into how we implement our XML and XQuery support. A must-read for anyone that wants to understand the "how we do it" and the why.

From the abstract:

This paper describes the experiences and the challenges in implementing XQuery in Microsoft’s SQL Server 2005. XQuery language constructs are compiled into an enhanced set of relational operators while preserving the semantics of XQuery. The query tree is optimized using relational optimization techniques, such as cost-based decisions, and rewrite rules based on XML schemas.

Enjoy!

The PDC F5 Network Interview is now online

mrys — Thu, 22 Sep 2005 07:51:00 GMT

The friendly folks of the F5 Networks Dev Central team interviewed me at PDC 2005. The 5 minute interview is now online (please accept my apologies for the rambling, but I seem to be recovering from the attendee party :-)).

New XQuery and XSLT Working Drafts: We are making progress!

mrys — Sat, 17 Sep 2005 01:21:00 GMT

The XML Query and XSL Working Groups have released the following Working Drafts of XML Query 1.0, XSL 2.0, XPath 2.0 and supporting documents. The goal of this release is to permit public review of changes made in response to Last Call comments. These documents are very close to the so called Candiate Recommendation that we hope to be able to publish soon. Yeah! We are making progress! Even though my issue with the spec has been closed without making the proposed change (minority opinion, here I come)...

Also published are the following updated Working Drafts which have not yet reached Last Call:

Comments are as always welcome through the W3C's Bugzilla interface or the public comment mailing list.

PS: Thanks to the editors and especially Norm who again did a terrific job on getting the docs ready...

News from the PDC 2005: XQuery, LINQ and friends, SQL Server 2005 September CTP

mrys — Thu, 15 Sep 2005 01:50:00 GMT

First, we have released the September SQL Server 2005 CTP for download. This is the last CTP before the final release. Yeah!

I will write my customary change blog on what has changed in the XML area a bit later this week.

This year's PDC again is quite exciting. First my presentation on XQuery in SQL Server 2005 (slides) was very well received, second there is some cool stuff being presented - which I knew of before, but seeing it publicly announced and seeing the audience getting excited is still cool and exciting, and third - and most importantly - I am getting some high-quality interactions with our customers. If you are at PDC and want to talk with me, feel free to come by the DAT track lounge in the great hall and ask for me (I will be there Thursday for much of the day).

My code samples that I used during my demo are now up on the COMMNET session download page. I will also place them on my blog for those that want to see the code.

For more details, including my report and my take on the exciting new developments around LINQ and friends please continue here...

PDC 2005 XQuery Deep Dive talk outline

mrys — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 05:54:00 GMT

Here is the high-level outline of the talk I am planning on presenting. Note that there is lots of ground to cover and only limited time. Thus, I am not planning on giving an in-depth XQuery tutorial but rather show several XQuery statements to give a feel for the language and talk about how to use it in the context of SQL Server and how to optimize it by use of XML indices.

Please continue on for the table of content outline...

Channel 9 and Ken North Videos

mrys — Mon, 29 Aug 2005 03:08:00 GMT

I am back from vacation (no shark encounter :-)). I had a good time and have much more photos and dive reports to upload.

While I was gone, Robert Scoble and Channel 9 published the video they took in my messy office before I went on vacation to give you your XML and SQL Server 2005 fix while I was gone :-). We chat about XML, SQL Server, my role as a program manager, security and XML etc. I also include some simple demos.

Also, Ken North published two videos he taped during the town hall meeting during the XML 2004 conference last year.

Enjoy!

Get your scuba gear for PDC 05 and get ready to dive into XQuery

mrys — Mon, 29 Aug 2005 03:07:00 GMT

Get your scuba gear for PDC 05 and get ready to dive into XQuery, because I will be presenting a deep dive into XQuery in SQL Server at PDC.

Here are some PDC links:

If you are interested in XQuery, XML-oriented programming languages and data management, I can also recommend the following two sessions:

The .NET Language Integrated Query Framework: An Overview
Using the .NET Language Integrated Query Framework with Relational Data
Using the .NET Language Integrated Query Framework with XML Data
Future Directions: Data Access and Storage

There are also SQL Server CLR and SQL Service Broker presentations.

As always, please let me know if you have anything you want me to cover during the presentation.

See you in LA!

Interviewed by Tim Anderson

mrys — Fri, 22 Jul 2005 03:36:00 GMT

Tim interviewed me as part of the earlier mentioned wireside chats, and has now published the interview on his website ITWriting.com. We talk about data modeling when relational tables support XML datatypes, use cases for XML in the context of database systems, and the XQuery standard timing w.r.t. the SQL release.

XQuery1.0/XPath 2.0 needs your help!

mrys — Wed, 13 Jul 2005 10:03:00 GMT

As I mentioned earlier, XQuery 1.0/XPath 2.0 has still one last call issue that that can benefit from user input. Basically, the question is, whether the so called value comparisons (that use the Fortran style syntax eq, lt, ge etc) should behave the same when encountering untyped values as the general comparisons (the XPath 1.0 aligned =, <, >= etc. that provide implicit existential quantification) or whether they should treat the untyped values always as strings.

For more information and how you can help, please continue here....