Question

I am confused as to how do I use the SQL XML datatype, assuming I have some data store in a XML file, do I store this XML file into the SQL XML datatype field or there is a way to write to it without writing into a XML file? Please advice, thanks.

Answer 1

Its not clear to me what you want. But you can store the xml file into a xml field and manipulate this field whatever you want.

Oracle database allows you to create a table based on a xml file, and changes on the table reflect over the xml file, you cant do that in SQL Server.

Anyway, you can manipulate a xml field like this:

declare @friends xml

set @friends =
'
<friends>
    <friend>
        <id>3</id>
    </friend>
    <friend>
        <id>6</id>
    </friend>
    <friend>
        <id>15</id>
    </friend>
</friends>
'

select
    template.item.value('.', 'bigint') as id
from @friends.nodes('//friends/friend/id') template(item)