Question

I need help inserting xml files into SQL Server 2008.

I have the following SQL statement:

insert into dbo.articles(id, title, contents)
  SELECT  X.article.query('id').value('.', 'INT'),
        X.article.query('article').value('.', 'VARCHAR(50)'),
        X.article.query('/doc/text()').value('.', 'VARCHAR(MAX)')
   FROM (
     SELECT CAST(x AS XML)
     FROM OPENROWSET(
           BULK 'E:\test\test_files\1000006.xml',
           SINGLE_BLOB) AS T(x)
        ) AS T(x)
CROSS APPLY x.nodes('doc') AS X(article);

which basically shreds an XML doc into a columns. However, I want to be able to insert all the files in a folder, and not manually specify the file, as in this case E:\test\test_files\1000006.xml

Answer 1

Are you using a stored procedure? You can specify the file name as a parameter.

Something like…

CREATE PROCEDURE sp_XMLLoad
   @FileName
AS SET NOCOUNT ON
SELECT  X.article.query('id').value('.', 'INT'),
        X.article.query('article').value('.', 'VARCHAR(50)'),   
        X.article.query('/doc/text()').value('.', 'VARCHAR(MAX)')
FROM (
      SELECT CAST(x AS XML)
      FROM OPENROWSET(
            BULK @FileName,
            SINGLE_BLOB) AS T(x)

Not exactly like that … you’ll need to add quotes around the @Filename I bet. Maybe assemble it with quotes and then use that variable.

If you’re using SSIS, you can then pump all the files from a directory to the stored procedure, or to the SSIS code used.