2.0 SQL to XML converter, in C# and VB.NET

There has been a lot of work over the past few years in standardizing database access methodologies. One of greatest paradigms in database access is the advent of OleDb (object linking and embedding for Databases). This makes it possible to connect to many different types of database, and manipulate them using a common object model, changing only the connection string.

However, with the advent of the Internet, having local access to a database is not enough, people expect to be able to access enterprise data from any device, anywhere. This means that database queries and results need to be in a common format, regardless of the underlying database architecture, be it Access, SQL, Oracle, MySQL etc. The general consensus is that this format should be XML. Although there are many ways in which XML could describe a database result set, here, we use a format that is quite native to .NET, but yet still very portable.

Porting database queries and responses over the Internet is not the only application of this technology. In fact, it may be very beneficial to your application performance if, for instance you were to store the results of long-running stored procedures in XML, and cache them for later.

This C# (and VB.NET) application can execute SQL queries on any type of database, and return the result in XML. To use this utility, type the DSN and SQL statement into the boxes provided, and press “Query”. If you are unfamiliar with DSN or SQL statements, please refer to your database documentation, or Chapter 2 of “Network Programming in .NET”