Question

From SQL Server 2005, I need to do an export for a client to an xml-like format shown below. Why they are not using XML, I don’t know. Any ideas on how to do this quickly without exporting the file “FOR XML” and then writing a messy script to go through the text file and find and replace <, >, and every closing XML tag? Thank you.

START_FILE:
DATE:
COLUMN1:A
COLUMN2:B
COLUMN3:C
COLUMN1:D
COLUMN2:E
COLUMN3:F
COLUMN1:G
COLUMN2:H
COLUMN3:I
END_FILE:

Answer 1

I went with Martin’s suggestion of trying an UNPIVOT query, which was all new to me. Using SSIS, I am now exporting the query to a text file formatted exactly as I need it with a run time of just a few seconds. I am using a query like below with a “:” as a column delimiter. Great suggestion Martin!

SELECT 'START_FILE' as FieldName, '' as 'FieldValue'
UNION ALL 
select 'DATE' as FieldName, getDate() as 'FieldValue'

UNION ALL

SELECT  FieldName, FieldValue
FROM
    (
    SELECT
    Cast(Column1Name as varchar) as VendorColumn1Name,
    Cast(Column2Name as varchar) as VendorColumn2Name,
    Cast(Column3Name as varchar) as VendorColumn3Name
    FROM MyTable
    ) c
    UNPIVOT
    (
    FieldValue for FieldName IN(VendorColumn1Name, VendorColumn2Name, VendorColumn3Name)
    ) as p

UNION ALL
SELECT 'END_FILE' as FieldName, '' as 'FieldValue'