Question

I have an xml column in my SQL Server database that has records in the following format

<items>
<item>
      <data alias="Number">123N</data> 
      <data alias="Description">4 sq.mm Feed Through Terminal block in Grey colour</data>   
      <data alias="Standard Packing Quantity">100</data> 
 </item>
 <item>
      <data alias="Number">234N</data> 
      <data alias="Description">Toy</data> 
      <data alias="Standard Packing Quantity">100</data> 
 </item>
 <item>
      <data alias="Number">579N</data> 
      <data alias="Description">Doll</data> 
      <data alias="Standard Packing Quantity">100</data> 
 </item>
 <item>
      <data alias="Catalouge Number">234</data> 
      <data alias="Description">Vehicle</data> 
      <data alias="Standard Packing Quantity">324234</data> 
 </item>
 </items>

So to extract the data here I use:

---

SELECT 
       CatalogueNo,Description,StdPackingQty 
       from
       (select
 CAST(xml as xml).query('//data alias=''Description'']').value('.','nvarchar(225)')   [Description],   
 CAST(xml as xml).query('//data [@alias=''Catalouge Number'']')
.value('.','nvarchar(225)')[CatalogueNo],  
 CAST(xml as xml).query('//data [@alias=''Standard Packing Quantity'']').value('.','nvarchar(225)')[StdPackingQty]
        from [dbo].[cmsContentXml] )as hierarchy
Where CatalogueNo is not null

---

The problem I face is that the data that is extracted is all concatenated.
I need data in separate rows for each item,so the data needs to be in 3
columns and 4 rows.

Kindly help me resolve the issue asap and help write a query that would fetch data
free of concat

Answer 1

You can use Cross Apply to breakdown the XML into separate data rows, and pull the data from those:

SELECT 
    CatalogueNo,Description,StdPackingQty 
from (
    select 
        i.value('data[@alias="Description"][1]','nvarchar(225)') [Description],
        i.value('data[@alias="Catalouge Number"][1]','nvarchar(225)') [CatalogueNo],
        i.value('data[@alias="Standard Packing Quantity"][1]','nvarchar(225)') [StdPackingQty]
    from [Connectwell].[dbo].[cmsContentXml]
    cross apply xml.nodes('/items/item') x(i)
) as hierarchy 
--Where CatalogueNo is not null  

Note: I’ve remmed out the where clause at the end as it will reduce you to just one row, whereas the question state you want 4 rows as the result.