Question

I was wondering if someone could help

I’ve successfully been able to import an XML document to a table with an XML data type in SQL Server2008, how ever when I try and shred from that table to a staging table any DATE values without an entered date are inserted to the staging table as 1900-01-01.

Is there a cleaver way i’m missing to stop it doing this and simply insert NULL instead. I could use NULLIF on the staging table and replace 1900-01-01 with null but I’m reluctant to do this in case there are genuine 1900-01-01 values.

My code looks something like this

SELECT tab.col.value('LastDate[1]','DATE') LastARD'

FROM   import.XMLCompanyDetail

 CROSS APPLY
          xmldata.nodes('//VN/CompanyList/Row') AS tab(col)

Many thanks

Please see below the example XML i’m importing

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?>
<VN>
<CompanyList>
<Row num="1"><CoNum>7878</CoNum><CoName>ExampleName</CoName><DInc>1978-12-30</DInc><DDis></DDis></Row>
</CompanyList>
</VN>

The date DDIS should be NULL but rather when it imports to my staging table it inserts 1901-01-01 instead.

updated code to show what I mean

create table staging_table
(DInc DATE NULL, LastARD DATE NULL);

with XMLCompanyDetail as 
(
SELECT CAST('<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?> 
<VN>
<CompanyList>
<Row num="1"><CoNum>7878</CoNum><CoName>ExampleName</CoName><DInc>1978-12-30</DInc><DDis></DDis></Row> 
</CompanyList>
</VN>
' AS XML) AS xmldata
)

INSERT INTO Staging_Table
SELECT tab.col.value('DInc[1]','DATE') DInc,
tab.col.value('DDis[1]','DATE') LastARD
FROM XMLCompanyDetail
CROSS APPLY
xmldata.nodes('//VN/CompanyList/Row') AS tab(col)

SELECT * FROM Staging_table
drop table staging_table

Answer 1

Edit

Following Update to the question the following works but I’m not sure if there is a better way.

SELECT tab.col.value('DInc[1][. != '''']','DATE') DInc,
tab.col.value('DDis[1][. != '''']','DATE') LastARD
FROM XMLCompanyDetail
CROSS APPLY
xmldata.nodes('//VN/CompanyList/Row') AS tab(col)