Question

I have an XML column in a table where each row of the table is a complete XML node. I am trying to simply trying to select a subset of these rows and generate an XML document out of it with a root node. I thought I could do the following, but it keeps added an extra wrapper around each node with the name of the XML column. Is there anything different I can do to not get this wrapper?

Sample Data Structure:

CREATE TABLE ActivityTable 
(
    XMLDATA AS XML
)

INSERT INTO [ActivityTable] VALUES ( '<Activity>This is activity one</Activity>' )
INSERT INTO [ActivityTable] VALUES ( '<Activity>This is activity two</Activity>' )
INSERT INTO [ActivityTable] VALUES ( '<Activity>This is activity three</Activity>' ) 

Query to get Data

SELECT 
    XMLdata FROM ActivityTable 
FOR XML PATH(''), ROOT('RootNode')

What I’m getting:

<root>
  <XMLdata>
    <Activity>This is activity one</Activity>
  </XMLdata>
  <XMLdata>
    <Activity>This is activity two</Activity>
  </XMLdata>
  <XMLdata>
    <Activity>This is activity three</Activity>
  </XMLdata>
</root>

What I want:

<root>
  <Activity>This is activity one</Activity>
  <Activity>This is activity two</Activity>
  <Activity>This is activity three</Activity>
</root>

Answer 1

SELECT XMLdata AS '*' 
FROM ActivityTable 
FOR XML PATH(''), ROOT('RootNode')

Columns with a Name Specified as a Wildcard Character

If the column name specified is a wildcard character (*), the content
of that column is inserted as if there is no column name specified.