Question

I have a stored procedure that ideally should be able to accept a list/table of NVARCHARs from the database client. I’m aware of table parameters in SQL Server 2008 but I’m stuck with running SQL Server 2003.

Currently, I’m concatenating the strings with a separator character on the client side, passing the resulting string as a NVARCHAR parameter, and then teasing apart the string on entry to the stored procedure, but this leaves much to be desired.

Answer 1

Have you looked at passing in XML?

So, for XML a little like:

<ArrayOfService xmlns:xsd='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema' xmlns:xsi='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance'>   <Service Id='2' Name='AUSTRALIA' Code='AUS' />   <Service Id='10' Name='FAR EAST' Code='FEE' /> </ArrayOfService> 

In SQL Server 2005 you could do:

-- Lookup Services DECLARE @ServiceXml AS XML  CREATE TABLE #Service (     Id INT,     [Name] VARCHAR( 50 ),     Code VARCHAR( 10 ) )  INSERT INTO #Service (     Id,     [Name],     Code ) SELECT     CASE         WHEN LegsTbl.rows.value('@Id', 'nvarchar(255)') = '' THEN NULL         WHEN LegsTbl.rows.value('@Id', 'int') = 0 THEN NULL         ELSE LegsTbl.rows.value('@Id', 'int')     END AS Id,     LegsTbl.rows.value('@Name', 'varchar(50)') AS [Name],     LegsTbl.rows.value('@Code', 'varchar(50)') AS TopazCode FROM     @ServiceXml.nodes('/ArrayOfService/Service') LegsTbl(rows) 

Or SQL Server 2000:

DECLARE @ServiceXml AS NTEXT DECLARE @iServiceXml AS INT  --Create an internal representation of the XML document. EXEC sp_xml_preparedocument @iServiceXml OUTPUT, @ServiceXml  CREATE TABLE #Service (     Id INT,     [Name] VARCHAR( 50 ),     Code VARCHAR( 10 ) )  INSERT INTO #Service (     Id,     [Name],     Code ) SELECT     Id,     Name,     Code FROM OPENXML( @iServiceXml, '/ArrayOfService/Service', 3)     WITH (Link8Id   int '@Id',           Name  varchar(50) '@Name',           Code  varchar(10) '@TopazCode')