• Chapter 1: Getting Started with Stylus Studio
• Chapter 2: Editing and Querying XML
• Chapter 3: Converting Non-XML Files to XML
• Chapter 4: Working with XSLT
• Chapter 5: Creating XSLT Using the XSLT Mapper
• Chapter 6: Debugging Stylesheets
• Chapter 7: Defining XML Schemas
• Chapter 8: Defining Document Type Definitions
• Chapter 9: Writing XPath Expressions
• Chapter 10: Working with XQuery in Stylus Studio
• Chapter 11: Composing Web Service Calls
• Chapter 12: Accessing Relational Data as XML
  • Overview of DB-to-XML Data Sources
  • Opening a New DB-to-XML Data Source Document
  • Specifying Connection Settings
  • Working with Scenarios
  • Composing SQL/XML in Stylus Studio
  • Working with Relational Data as XML
  • Using the URL Builder
• Chapter 13: Extending Stylus Studio
• Chapter 14: Stylus Studio Reference

Home > Online Product Documentation > Table of Contents > How Relational Data is Translated to XML

How Relational Data is Translated to XML

Consider the following illustration of an excerpt from the authors table in the Microsoft SQL Server pubs database. This illustration shows only the first six columns of the table (and only the first few records); the state, zip, and contract columns have been omitted for clarity:

As you can see, the authors table has columns for author ID ( au_id), author's last name ( au_lname), author's first name ( au_fname), and so on.

If we write a SELECT statement ( SELECT * FROM dbo.authors), Stylus Studio returns the following XML document:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
               
<root>
               
    <row>
               
        <au_id>213-46-8915</au_id>
               
        <au_lname>Green</au_lname>
               
        <au_fname>Marjorie</au_fname>
               
        <phone>415 986-7020</phone>
               
        <address>309 63rd St. #411</address>
               
        <city>Oakland</city>
               
        <state>CA</state>
               
        <zip>94618</zip>
               
        <contract>true</contract>
               
    </row>
               
    <row>
               
        <au_id>238-95-7766</au_id>
               
        <au_lname>Carson</au_lname>
               
        <au_fname>Cheryl</au_fname>
               
        <phone>415 548-7723</phone>
               
        <address>589 Darwin Ln.</address>
               
        <city>Berkeley</city>
               
        <state>CA</state>
               
        <zip>94705</zip>
               
        <contract>true</contract>
               
    </row>
               
    <row>
               
        <au_id>267-41-2394</au_id>
               
        <au_lname>O&apos;Leary</au_lname>
               
        <au_fname>Michael</au_fname>
               
        <phone>408 286-2428</phone>
               
        <address>22 Cleveland Av. #14</address>
               
        <city>San Jose</city>
               
        <state>CA</state>
               
        <zip>95128</zip>
               
        <contract>true</contract>
               
    </row>
               
</root>
               

            

Notice that each record in the table (that is, each author) is rendered as a separate <row> element. Similarly, each column is rendered as a subelement of <row>, taking the column name (au_id, au_lname, and so on) as its own ( <au_id>, <au_lname>, and so on). The document's root element is given the name <root>.