When to use XML Export or XML SQLExport

See Also

There is a clear distinction between the XML.Export facility and XML.SQLExport. XML.Export generates clean XML, resulting in a small and compact result documents and does not contain any references to its origin: a relational database with tables and columns. The format of the document depends on the table that is being exported and the structure is therefore highly connected to the data: the document contains only data and no technical information. It is therefore very suitable for passing on directly to 'the outside world', especially when the receiver is unknown.

XML.SQLExport generates a technical XML document with a fixed format and results in a larger document than XML.Export (up to twice as large). The format is highly connected to its origin: a relational database. The names of elements and the meta data all refer to SQL. The format is therefore not very suitable to pass on to another product. It is however very useful as an intermediate format which can be handled further, using XSL to format it correctly.