Microsoft® SQL Server 2012 Unleashed

Developing Managed User-Defined Functions (UDFs)

Using SQL Server 2012 and the .NET Framework, you can write both scalar (single-valued) and table-valued user-defined functions in managed code. Scalar functions are the easier of the two, so we look at those first.

Scalar UDFs

In SSDT, right-click your SQLCLR project in the Solution Explorer and select Add, Add New Function. Next, name this new class XSLT, and when it opens in the code editor, rename its default method to XSLTransform because that’s what it is going to do—transform the content of an xml-typed variable using XSLT, using a stylesheet also stored in an xml column.

The xml data type lets you take advantage of server-side storage of XML, so why not leverage that same technology to ...