Convert any Table into XML format & view it using XSL

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Introduction

This application allows you to convert a Recordset derived from a Table of any ADO and OLE-DB complaint Database into XML format and you can additionally view it using XSL. I have tested it out with Access and SQL Server but it should work fine with other Database Management Systems. It is more generic than an existing Microsoft KB article - Q281099: HOWTO: Use Active Server Pages to Dynamically Generate XML and also differs code-wise.

The user has to specify a DSN-less Connection string and a Table name pertaining to that database. The corresponding Recordset is converted to XML and this is displayed by a generic Extensible Stylesheet Language file. You can save this page as a .xml file. To keep the code snappy it is assumed that the DSN-less Connection string and the Table name are valid and no checking is done. Moreover special data types like Image, Binary are not supported.

A XML file generated by this app may look like this -

<?xml version='1.0'?>
<?xml-stylesheet type='text/xsl' href='generic.xsl'
version='1.0'?>
<xml>
<row CallID='CallID' ContactID='ContactID'
CallDate='CallDate' CallTime='CallTime'
Subject='Subject' Notes='Notes' />
<row CallID='1' ContactID='1' CallDate='11/21/1994'
CallTime='12:05:00 PM' Subject='Suite of coffees.'
Notes='Spoke to Janet about NWIND carrying a coffee
collection designed by us.' />
<row CallID='2' ContactID='1' CallDate='12/13/1994'
CallTime='12:45:00 PM' Subject='Pricing for proposed
suite.' Notes='Too high - should wait and see if Janet
comes around.' />
</xml>

XML has become the lingua-franca of the Internet. RDBMS's like Oracle and SQL Server have built-in XML features. To retrieve rows in XML format using SQL Server 2000,you can use the SELECT query with the FOR clause.

Steps to run the app -

1. The zipped file contains 3 files xmily.html, xmile.asp and generic.xsl. Create a new folder named xmile within the folder that contains the content for your default Web site. This is the :\InetPub\WWWRoot folder by default. Unzip xmile.zip to this folder.
2. You'll need IIS or PWS to first call xmile.html using http like this-
   http://localhost/xmile/xmily.html
3. Type in a DSN-less Connection string to connect to a DBMS and a Table name. The XML content opens in a new window as a HTML table with the help of the XSL file, generic.xsl.

Source Code

• xmily.html allows user to submit Connection String and Table name
• generic.xsl displays the recordset converted to XMLformat as a HTML table.
• xmile.asp handles the actual conversion of recordset info into XML.

Useful Links

• W3Schools.com contains simple and useful tutorials on XML and XSL.
• This Charles Caroll article talks about the advantages of using the GetRows Method

You can find a nice compilation of Connection Strings here

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