Question

I have an XML like this stored in an XML datatype column (will have multiple such rows in table)-

<Root xmlns="http://tempuri.org" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
  <Elem1 type="T1">
    <Name type="string" display="First name">John</Name>
    <TimeZone display="Time zone">
      <DisplayName type="string" display="Display name">GMT Standard Time</DisplayName>
    </TimeZone>
  </Elem1>
</Root> 

How can I filter based on a node element say (using SQL SERVER 2008 R2) – get all ‘Elem1’ nodes or get all ‘Name’ nodes or get all TimeZone nodes ? Something like using local-name() function ?

EDIT – Part Solution –

I got the solution partly (see John’s reply below and then run this) –

SELECT C1.query('fn:local-name(.)') AS Nodes FROM [dbo].[MyXmlTable] AS MyXML CROSS APPLY MyXML.MyXmlCol.nodes('//*') AS T ( C1 ) 

The query above returns all the node elements across the TABLE. Now, I want to say filter upon specific elements and return the element and its value or its attribute value. How to achieve this (by using WHERE clause or any other filter mechanism)?

Answer 1

I’m not sure what result you are looking for but something like this perhaps.

declare @T table(XMLCol xml)
insert into @T values
('<Root xmlns="http://tempuri.org" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
  <Elem1 type="T1">
    <Name type="string" display="First name">John</Name>
    <TimeZone display="Time zone">
      <DisplayName type="string" display="Display name">GMT Standard Time</DisplayName>
    </TimeZone>
  </Elem1>
</Root>') 

declare @Node varchar(50)
set @Node = 'Elem1'

select N.query('.') as Value
from @T as T
  cross apply T.XMLCol.nodes('//*[local-name()=sql:variable("@Node")]') as X(N)

Result:

<p1:Elem1 xmlns:p1="http://tempuri.org" type="T1">
  <p1:Name type="string" display="First name">John</p1:Name>
  <p1:TimeZone display="Time zone">
    <p1:DisplayName type="string" display="Display name">GMT Standard Time</p1:DisplayName>
  </p1:TimeZone>
</p1:Elem1>

Edit

If you want the actual value instead of the entire XML you can do like this instead.

declare @Node varchar(50)
set @Node = 'TimeZone'

select N.value('.', 'varchar(100)') as Value
from @T as T
  cross apply T.XMLCol.nodes('//*[local-name()=sql:variable("@Node")]') as X(N)

Result:

Value
------------------
GMT Standard Time