Question

Is it possible to update a table and return the updated values in a FOR XML statement?
Consider the following table of customers:

Customers  
Id     FirstNam     LastNam  
 1      John          Doe  
 2      James        Smith
 3      Martin       Jones  

I’d like to update the FirstNam of the customer with Id 2 to David, and return the result as XML.
I’ve tried using:

UPDATE Customers  
SET FirstNam = 'David'
WHERE Id = 2
OUTPUT inserted.FirstNam
FOR XML PATH('')

which, of course, doesn’t work. What am I doing wrong? As always, any help is greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

We can not insert the updated values to XML directly.
If you want to save XML of updated data, then you need to make it in two steps:

Step 1: Use Table Variable and insert the updated data into that table variable (as simple process)

DECLARE @Updated AS TABLE(columns..)

UPDATE Customers  
SET FirstNam = 'New_Name'
OUTPUT INSERTED.FirstNam @Updated
WHERE Id = 2

Step 2:

Generate XML from table variable @Updated as:

SELECT *
FROM @Updated
FOR XML PATH(''), ROOT('Cust')

and save it to the place where you want.