Question

I have an xml document which i want to pass as a parameter to a stored procedure
the xml looks like this

<root> 
    <EMPLOYEE ID= 100> 
     <PERIOD>AUG-2010</PERIOD>
        <earnings> 
               <title>BASIC</title>
        <amount>2000</amount>
        <title>HRA</title>
        <amount>1000</amount>
        <title>CONVEYANCE</title>
        <amount>500</amount>
        </earnings> 
    </EMPLOYEE> 
     <EMPLOYEE ID= 101> 
    <PERIOD>AUG-2010</PERIOD>
          <earnings> 
               <title>BASIC</title>
        <amount>2000</amount>
        <title>HRA</title>
        <amount>400</amount>
        <title>CONVEYANCE</title>
        <amount>500</amount>
        </earnings> 
    </EMPLOYEE> 

 <EMPLOYEE ID= 102> 
    <PERIOD>AUG-2010</PERIOD>
          <earnings> 
               <title>BASIC</title>
        <amount>2000</amount>
        <title>HRA</title>
        <amount>800</amount>
        <title>CONVEYANCE</title>
        <amount>5000</amount>
        </earnings> 
 </EMPLOYEE> 
</root>

I need to store the above information to 2 tables ie: payslipdetails and payheaddetails.
I think I have to loop through the xml doc . the outer loop gives me the employee id and period then I insert into the payslipdetails table with those fields and then get into the inner loop and I want to insert the payheaddetailswith the same employeeid and all his earnings deatls like

empid   title  amount
100     basic   2000
100     hra     1000
100     conveyance   500

then I go to the outer loop and get the next employee id and repeat the same thing

How can I go to the inner child xml any ways like openxml etc..??

Answer 1

First of all, this is not valid XML:

<EMPLOYEE ID= 102> 
    <PERIOD>AUG-2010</PERIOD>
          <earnings> 
               <title>BASIC</title>
        <amount>2000</amount>
        <title>HRA</title>
        <amount>800</amount>
        <title>CONVEYANCE</title>
        <amount>5000</amount>
        </earnings> 
 </EMPLOYEE> 

The ID= attribute must be followed immediately by data – preferably in double quotes – this is valid:

<EMPLOYEE ID="102"> 

Next: the fact that you have multiple <title>..</title><amount>...</amount> tag pairs inside your <earnings> tag without a container around them makes parsing next to impossible (or really messy)…..

<earnings> 
   <title>BASIC</title>
   <amount>2000</amount>
   <title>HRA</title>
   <amount>800</amount>
   <title>CONVEYANCE</title>
   <amount>5000</amount>
</earnings> 

If ever possible, try to change this to something like this:

<earnings> 
   <earning>
     <title>BASIC</title>
     <amount>2000</amount>
   </earning>
   <earning>
     <title>HRA</title>
     <amount>800</amount>
   </earning>
   <earning>
     <title>CONVEYANCE</title>
     <amount>5000</amount>
   </earning>
</earnings> 

That would be much easier to handle!

If you had that extra <earning> container that encloses the <title>/<amount> pair, then you could easily write this XQuery statement and handle all your needs without messy, slow cursors alltogether:

SELECT
    RootData.Employee.value('(@ID)[1]', 'int') AS 'EmployeeID',
    E.E2.value('(title)[1]', 'varchar(50)') AS 'Title',
    E.E2.value('(amount)[1]', 'decimal(18,4)') AS 'Amount'
from
    (your XML column).nodes('/root/EMPLOYEE') AS RootData(Employee)
CROSS APPLY
    RootData.Employee.nodes('earnings/earning') AS E(E2)

and you’d get an output something like this:

EmployeeID  Title         Amount
  100       BASIC          2000.0000
  100       HRA            1000.0000
  100       CONVEYANCE      500.0000
  101       BASIC          2000.0000
  101       HRA             400.0000
  101       CONVEYANCE      500.0000
  102       BASIC          2000.0000
  102       HRA             800.0000
  102       CONVEYANCE     5000.0000