Representing relational database data as XML and using XPath to get results

Question

Hello,

we have a relational database with some data and we need to offer the content of the database via XML web services. We also have to enable users to get parts of the XML representation using XPath (also later there may be a need to modify data indirectly using XML representation of the data with XQuery). Is there a simple way to achieve this in C#? The user will be known XML schema of the data.

Keywords for web search also appreciated.

Answer 1

Read up on OData ;) A lot better than bad web services. Full tooling support in .NET (LINQ integrated) it is a semantical way to expose data via intelligent web services.

Answer 2

There are a few ways I discovered, although I couldn't find much data.

One is to use an SQL query which returns an XML, the other is to use DataSet class with some of it XML processing possibilities. DataSet also supports XPath queries.