CAML Query

CAML stands for Collaborative Application Markup Language. This language within the context of Microsoft SharePoint Services/Foundation to define query against list data.

To simplify things, as we have SQL to perform operations of SQL Server, we have CAML to perform operations on List.

Note: With SQL, we can perform a lot more complex operations which we cannot perform in CAML.

CAML is XML like structure with some of the schema elements defined below

WHERE <Where> </Where> Just like WHERE Clause in SQL but unlike SQL where we have WHERE mostly coming in last, here our query starts with a WHERE Clause.

AND <And> </And> Just like AND Clause in SQL but as explained above, its a XML like schema so every criteria has to be inside AND Tags.

OR <Or> <Or> Similar to OR Clause in SQL but XML like schema.

EQ <Eq> <Eq> Represents a "=" (Equals To)

NEQ <Neq> <Neq> Represents a "!=" (Not Equals To)

GT <gt > <gt > Represents a ">" (Greater Than)

LT <lt > <lt > Represents a "<" (Less Than)

FieldRef <FieldRef> <FieldRef> Can be considered as a column in SQL Server but with different attributes

A standard CAML QUERY

<Where><Eq><FieldRef Name='Title'/><Value Type='Text'>Hello World</Value></Eq></Where>

More on CAML in next post