The next version of SQL Server will have a significant amount of functionality related to storing, querying and extracting XML from the database. To accompany the information being imparted at TechEd 2004, myself and rest of the folks behind the XML Developer Center on MSDN decided to run a series of articles on the XML features of SQL Server 2005. The articles will run through the month of June.

The first article in the series is XML Support in Microsoft SQL Server 2005. Read this article if you are interested in learning how SQL Server 2005 has become an fully XML-aware database including the addition of the XML datatype, support for XML Schemas, indexing  of XML data, XQuery, querying XML views of relational data using XPath and much more.