Question

I have not worked with XML in the database before so I need some help.
I need to get the value where name equals “sv-SE” from the XML for a number of rows.

XML looks like this:
Row 1

<cultures>
  <culture name="sv-SE">Sverige</culture>
  <culture name="en-GB">Sweden</culture>
</cultures>

Row 2

<cultures>
  <culture name="sv-SE">Norge</culture>
  <culture name="en-GB">Norway</culture>
</cultures>

Expected output from this query would be

Sverige
Norge

When the name is “sv-SE”

select tblCountry.name.?? --XmlColumn
from tblCountry

Answer 1

declare @T table
(
  ID int identity,
  XMLCol xml
)

insert into @T values
('<cultures>
  <culture name="sv-SE">Sverige</culture>
  <culture name="en-GB">Sweden</culture>
</cultures>')

insert into @T values
('<cultures>
  <culture name="sv-SE">Norge</culture>
  <culture name="en-GB">Norway</culture>
</cultures>')

select XMLCol.value('(/cultures/culture[@name="sv-SE"])[1]', 'varchar(20)')
from @T

If you want different languages without rewriting the query you can use the sql:variable function.

declare @Lang varchar(5)
set @Lang = 'sv-SE'

select XMLCol.value('(/cultures/culture[@name=sql:variable("@Lang")])[1]', 'varchar(20)')
from @T