Question

            SELECT Col1
    FROM Table
    WHERE Col2 = 63895746
    ORDER BY Col
    FOR XML PATH,TYPE

I dont need NULLS in the result.
i want result to be wrapped by something like
< Cols >< /Cols > even if col1 is null or not

In this example Table doesn’t contain any rows for col2 = 63895746 , so i will get an empty result set, so the type directive will make it NULL and return it

Answer 1

How about

;with mytmp (f1) as (
  SELECT Col1
  FROM Table
  WHERE Col1 = 123456
  ORDER BY Col1
  FOR XML PATH('col'),root('cols'),TYPE
  )
select isnull(f1, '<cols></cols>')
from mytmp;