These days, you should hardly be surprised when you run into a business requirement to make data available over the Web. Fortunately, database products are making it easier and easier to hook up Internet protocols directly to your data. Microsoft SQL Server is a case in point. While SQL Server 2000 did allow Web data access, the process had a certain Rube Goldberg feel to it, requiring the use of the SQLXML library and a full installation of Internet Information Services. With SQL Server 2005, Microsoft has revisited its database Web access story, and the story is much improved. Now, you can have direct access to your SQL Server data from any HTTP SOAP client without any extra middleware at all - not even IIS. In this article, I'll show you how it works.
Web Services may not be getting quite the flurry of publicity that they were seeing for a few years, but they've developed into an essential part of connectivity for many applications. Microsoft continues to bet heavily on Web Services as a backbone for service-oriented architectures, so it makes sense that they've chosen to expose SQL Server 2005 data via a Web Service. Or, to be more precise, you can create as many Native XML Web Services as you like in SQL Server 2005.
