Question

I am using FOR XML in a query to join multiple rows together, but the text contains quotes, “<“, “>”, etc. I need the actual character instead of the encoded value like “"” etc. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

I have a similar requirement to extract column names for use in PIVOT query.

The solution I used was as follows:

SELECT @columns = STUFF((SELECT '],[' + Value
                               FROM Table
                              ORDER BY Value
                                FOR XML PATH('')), 1, 2, '') + ']'

This produces a single string:

[Value 1],[Value 2],[Value 3]

I hope this points you in the right direction.