CTP? Yeah you know me!

I know I know, corney, but it just popped into my head.  As I'm sure you've read elsewhere, the February CTP is out.  I just wanted to give an updated of what you can expect from SqlXml:

• SQLNCLI support - This should be pretty self-explanitory, you can now use the new SQL provider from withing SqlXml, required if you want to take advantage of...
• XMLDT support - We now allow you to map to XML columns, though there is no querying into them.  You can map elements to them and query the mapping, and we'll pull out the data from the column and insert it as appropriate.  You can now also use the XMLDT as the overflow column in bulkload, so that extra data you have can be preserved as XML data rather than a blob.
• ISAPI removal - We were shipping an ISAPI component to access SqlXml functionallity through your web browser.  After careful consideration, we decided to remove it.  First there were some security concerns.  Set up incorrectly, the ISAPI could cause you some issues.  By default it is safe but turning on the wrong options can leave some holes open.  Second, we believe that ASP.NET should be the way to develop web-based solutions.  Of course, you can use SqlXml via our managed wrappers to achieve the same results from with an ASP.NET application.  I aim to write up an article showing how you can re-create the ISAPI as an HTTP handler in managed code.  Look for that in a month or two.

That's the big news from SqlXml client land.  Go check out the February CTP to see all the great new SQL Server features!

Site News

Just some quick updates on the site.  If you haven't see Helena's article on an Xml Bookmarking reader go check it out, we've gotten a lot of positive feedback.  Next up will be an article from Oleg Tkachenko, XML MVP, on Indexing XML.  Its actually a two part article. the first dealing with documents and in memory XML, the second part dealing with SQL Server.  Look for that towards the end of next week.

As always, keep those questions and comments coming, and please let me know if there's more we can do or more you'd like to see up on the site.

Irwin Dolobowsky
SqlXml PM
Xml Dev Center Content Strategist.