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Asked: 2026-05-11T20:12:44+00:00

I’ve got a very large xml data set that is structured like the following:

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I’ve got a very large xml data set that is structured like the following:

<root>
    <person>
        <personid>HH3269732</personid>
        <firstname>John</firstname>
        <lastname>Smith</lastname>
        <entertime>01/02/2008 10:15</entertime>
        <leavetime>01/02/2008 11:45</leavetime>
        <entertime>03/01/2008 08:00</entertime>
        <leavetime>03/01/2008 10:00</leavetime>
        ... 
        // number of enter times and leave times vary from person to person
        // there may not be a final leave time (ie, they haven't left yet)
    </person>
    ...
</root>

The structure of the data is not under my control. This data is currently residing in a single xml column in a single row in MS SQL Server 2005. I am trying to construct a query which results in the following output:

HH3269732   John   Smith   01/02/2008 10:15   01/02/2008 11:45
HH3269732   John   Smith   03/01/2008 08:00   01/02/2008 10:00
HH3269735   Mark   Pines   02/01/2008 09:00   NULL
HH3263562   James  Frank   NULL               NULL
HH3264237   Harold White   04/18/2008 03:00   04/18/2008 05:00
...

My query currently looks like the following:

DECLARE @xml xml
SELECT @xml = XmlCol FROM Data

SELECT
    [PersonId] = Persons.PersonCollection.value('(personid)[1]', 'NVARCHAR(50)')
    ,[First Name] = Persons.PersonCollection.value('(firstname)[1]', 'NVARCHAR(50)')
    ,[Last Name] = Persons.PersonCollection.value('(lastname)[1]', 'NVARCHAR(50)')
    ??????
FROM @xml.nodes('root\person') Persons(PersonCollection)

That query may not be 100% right as I’m pulling it from memory, but the problem I’m having is that I don’t know how to include the entertime leavetime sequence elements in such a way as to get the desired rowset that I indicated above.

Thanks.

UPDATE:
I wanted to add that a given person record may have no entertime/leavetime sequence elements at all, but still needs to be returned in the rowset. I have updated the example of the desired output to reflect this.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team
    with cte_entertime as (
SELECT
    [PersonId] = t.c.value('(../personid)[1]', 'NVARCHAR(50)')
    ,[First Name] = t.c.value('(../firstname)[1]', 'NVARCHAR(50)')
    ,[Last Name] = t.c.value('(../lastname)[1]', 'NVARCHAR(50)')
    ,[Entertime] = t.c.value('.', 'NVARCHAR(50)')
    ,[entry_number] = ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY t.c)
FROM @x.nodes('root/person/entertime') t(c))
, cte_leavetime as (
    SELECT
    [Leavetime] = t.c.value('.', 'NVARCHAR(50)')
    ,[entry_number] = ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY t.c)
FROM @x.nodes('root/person/leavetime') t(c))
SELECT PersonID
    , [First Name]
    , [Last Name] 
    , [Entertime]
    , [Leavetime]
    FROM cte_entertime e 
    LEFT OUTER JOIN cte_leavetime l on e.entry_number = l.entry_number
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