Question

I have the following problem and hope someone could help.

I have a SQL Server database with a couple thousand rows. Every row consist of a column with an ID and a column with XML data.

This XML data looks something like:

<record id="1">
 <field tag="aa" occ="1" lang="nl-NL" invariant="false">Jan</field>
 <field tag="aa" occ="1" lang="en-US" invariant="false">John</field>
 <field tag="aa" occ="1" lang="de-DE" invariant="false">der Jan</field>
 <field tag="aa" occ="2" lang="nl-NL" invariant="false">Jan2</field>
 <field tag="aa" occ="2" lang="en-US" invariant="false">John2</field>
 <field tag="ab" occ="1">Something</field>
 <field tag="ac" occ="1" lang="de-DE" invariant="false">Rechnung</field>
 <field tag="ac" occ="1" lang="nl-NL" invariant="false">rekening</field>
 <field tag="ad" occ="1">Something2</field>
 <field tag="ae" occ="1" lang="nl-NL" invariant="false">stoeptegel</field>
</record>

I would like to edit this XML for every record according to the following rules:

1. For every unique occ (occurence), tag combination only 1 @invariant attribute can be true
2. If a has @lang=en-US attribute, then @invariant has to be ‘true’. Remaining fields with same occ, tag combination have to remain ‘false’. (like tag aa in sample code)
3. If a has @lang=nl-NL attribute, but no @lang=en-US, then @invariant has to be ‘true’ for ‘nl-NL’. Remaining fields with same occ, tag combination have to remain ‘false’. (like tag ac in sample code)
4. If a occ, tag combination has only 1 instance, then @invariant has to be ‘true’. So independent of @lang value. (like tag ae in sample code)

After running 1 or more SQL queries, the code should look like:

<record id="1">
 <field tag="aa" occ="1" lang="nl-NL" invariant="false">Jan</field>
 <field tag="aa" occ="1" lang="en-US" invariant="true">John</field>
 <field tag="aa" occ="1" lang="de-DE" invariant="false">der Jan</field>
 <field tag="aa" occ="2" lang="nl-NL" invariant="false">Jan2</field>
 <field tag="aa" occ="2" lang="en-US" invariant="true">John2</field>
 <field tag="ab" occ="1">Something</field>
 <field tag="ac" occ="1" lang="de-DE" invariant="false">Rechnung</field>
 <field tag="ac" occ="1" lang="nl-NL" invariant="true">rekening</field>
 <field tag="ad" occ="1">Something2</field>
 <field tag="ae" occ="1" lang="nl-NL" invariant="true">stoeptegel</field>
</record>

My problem is creating the correct SQL query, to replace all nodes for all records, according to the above rules.

So far I came up with this:

while exists 
(
select * 
from databasetable 
where xmlcolumn.exist('/record/field/@invariant[.="false"]') = 1
)

update databasetable
set xmlcolumn.modify
('replace value of (/record/field/@invariant[.="false"])[1] with "true"')

Which edits every value of @invariant into ‘true’.

Could someone help me build the correct query? Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Shred your XML and use row_number() with an order by clause that orders en-US first and nl-NL second.
Use a second row_number() to generate a unique key for each row (ID and RowNumber).
Store the values in a table variable.
Get the max row number and update the XML i a loop for each row number.

declare @Tmp table
(
  ID int, -- Primary key in databasetable
  RowNumber int,
  Tag varchar(2),
  Occ int,
  Lang varchar(5),
  Invariant bit
  primary key (ID, RowNumber)
);

with C1 as
(
  select T.ID, -- Primary key in databasetable
         R.F.value('@tag', 'varchar(2)') as Tag,
         R.F.value('@occ', 'int') as Occ,
         R.F.value('@lang', 'varchar(5)') as Lang
  from databasetable as T
    cross apply T.xmlcolumn.nodes('/record/field') as R(F)
), 
C2 as
(
  select ID, Tag, Occ, Lang,
         row_number() over(partition by ID order by (select 0)) as RowNumber,
         row_number() over(partition by ID, Tag, Occ 
                           order by case Lang 
                                      when 'en-US' then 1
                                      when 'nl-NL' then 2
                                      else 3
                                    end) as rnInv
  from C1
)
insert into @Tmp (ID, RowNumber, Tag, Occ, Lang, Invariant)
select ID, RowNumber, Tag, Occ, Lang, case rnInv when 1 then 1 else 0 end
from C2;

declare @MaxRowNum int;
declare @I int = 1;

select @MaxRowNum = max(RowNumber)
from @Tmp;

while @I <= @MaxRowNum
begin
  update T
  set xmlcolumn.modify('replace value of (/record/field[@tag = sql:column("Tmp.Tag") and
                                                        @occ = sql:column("Tmp.Occ") and
                                                        @lang = sql:column("Tmp.Lang")]/@invariant)[1] 
                          with sql:column("Tmp.Invariant")')
  from databasetable as T
    inner join @Tmp as Tmp
      on T.ID = Tmp.ID
  where Tmp.RowNumber = @I;

  set @I += 1;
end

A working sample can be found here.