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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-13T18:38:43+00:00

I have an SQL (Microsoft SQL 2008) table with XML data in one of

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I have an SQL (Microsoft SQL 2008) table with XML data in one of the columns. Each XML root node has an attribute which is a GUID.

For example:

<!--Row 1-->
<example:root id="E0B1BCEA-C0E2-4d7c-BF67-FA9A7C3FBA73">
    [...]
</example:root>

<!--Row 2-->
<example:root id="13BB87F4-32A5-4de7-8CE9-E62AF002B958">
    [...]
</example:root>

How is it possible to create a constraint which will ensure that this GUID is unique, i.e. there is no two rows sharing the same root/@id value?

Note: I can’t neither do it at application level, nor creating a stored procedure for the insert (because it requires to change an existing application).

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    If it is not a separate field then I don’t think you can.

    But, you can add a trigger on insert which would extract GUID from the XML data and put it in a separate field. And then you can have a unique constraint on that field.

    Another approach would be to create a nightly job, which would scan the database in search of duplicates.

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