U2U CAML Query Builder for SharePoint 2007
I wanted to drop a quick note to let people know I stumbled across this free community tool offered by U2U. For those of you who have a difficult time remembering the exact syntax for your SharePoint CAML Queries, this is a great tool.
It is a free download from U2U at: http://www.u2u.info/SharePoint/U2U%20Community%20Tools/Forms/AllItems.aspx
For those WSS3 and SharePoint 2007 users, you'll want the "CAML Query Builder release for SharePoint 2007 RTM" version.
This is a "No Install" download. You just unzip it to a folder and run it.
One of the things I really like about this tool is that, unlike many other SharePoint community tools, it does not have to run locally on the SharePoint Server. You can give it credentials and use the built-in web services in SharePoint to connect via HTTP.
Basically this tool allows you to connect to your SharePoint List and Libaries and run CAML queries visually. The tool builds the CAML XML for you and lets you test the queries to see what data is returned. It helps build the syntax for you and makes testing them much easier. You can also paste your own queries into the text editor and run them against the current site.
You can open and save your queries locally as text files so you can work on them through the tool. It's a great little application and has helped me out a lot for building some syntax that might not come naturally for those non-seasoned CAML query builders.
I hope this helps,
-Ryan