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Asked: 2026-05-10T19:40:04+00:00

Are there any tricks for preventing SQL Server from entitizing chars like &, <,

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Are there any tricks for preventing SQL Server from entitizing chars like &, <, and >? I’m trying to output a URL in my XML file but SQL wants to replace any ‘&’ with ‘&amp;‘

Take the following query:

SELECT 'http://foosite.com/' + RTRIM(li.imageStore)         + '/ImageStore.dll?id=' + RTRIM(li.imageID)         + '&raw=1&rev=' + RTRIM(li.imageVersion) AS imageUrl FROM ListingImages li FOR XML PATH ('image'), ROOT ('images'), TYPE

The output I get is like this (&s are entitized):

<images>   <image>     <imageUrl>http://foosite.com/pics4/ImageStore.dll?id=7E92BA08829F6847&amp;raw=1&amp;rev=0</imageUrl>   </image> </images>

What I’d like is this (&s are not entitized):

<images>   <image>     <imageUrl>http://foosite.com/pics4/ImageStore.dll?id=7E92BA08829F6847&raw=1&rev=0</imageUrl>   </image> </images>

How does one prevent SQL server from entitizing the ‘&’s into ‘&amp;‘?

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1 Answer

  1. What SQL Server generates is correct. What you expect to see is not well-formed XML. The reason is that & character signifies the start of an entity reference, such as &amp;. See the XML specification for more information.

    When your XML parser parses this string out of XML, it will understand the &amp; entity references and return the text back in the form you want. So the internal format in the XML file should not cause a problem to you unless you’re using a buggy XML parser, or trying to parse it manually (in which case your current parser code is effectively buggy at the moment with respect to the XML specification).

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