...and master of none

In my last post , I demonstrated how to shape and bend XML from your existing tables in SQL Server. In this post I am going to go the other direction and shred the xml directly into SQL tables with a desired structure. I will also create a parent-child relationship between entities where no keys previously existed in the xml. This approach uses the older OPENXML mechanisms and is distinct from the value() and node() methods introduced later. I believe this approach to be superior and easier to construct than that demonstrated by Adam Machanic . I'm assuming here that you've loaded the xml into the @xmlDocument variable (as in my previous example) You need a document handle (@XmlDocumentHandle). As long as this handle remains open, the id's returned for each node do not change. Use the OPENXML function with the @XmlDocumentHandle and create an XPath query that finds the data for the you want. The value of 9 means to map attributes to your defined table, and handles r...

The XML functionality of SQL Server is vast, however, the best subset of that functionality that I've found may be demonstrated in the following example: Unfortunately, the example result is listed before the code. Join all the desired tables together Set the desired root element Set the path to an empty string to avoid an extra XML element at the root of each resulting row Provide an XPATH name with attributes for each of the desired columns (select * doesn't work well) Keep all the selected columns together by XPATH name or you'll split your xml attributes See my next blog entry for my best way to shred the xml