Question

The XML generated by using

XMLAgg(XMLElement('student', ...)...)

spits out everything onto one line. Given that I have a very large table, it reaches line length limit when spooling.

I’d like to have each <student>…</student> node on a separate line. This page suggests using XMLText(x’0A’) to insert new lines, but SQLPlus doesn’t seem to recognize it.

I’ve already tried :

set long 2000000000
set linesize 32767
set wrap on
set trimspool on

Answer 1

The usual trick in 10g was to add .extract('/*') on the outer xml operation you were doing eg

xmlagg(....).extract('/*')

but that doesn’t work in 11g. for a cross version compatible one using an xsl transform see Generate XML file with Customized XML tags out of oracle database table.

10.2.0.4:

SQL> create table foo (id) as select rownum from dual connect by level <= 2;

Table created.

SQL> select xmlagg(xmlelement("id", xmlelement("id2", id))).extract('/*') a from foo;

A
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
<id>
  <id2>1</id2>
</id>
<id>
  <id2>2</id2>
</id>

SQL> select xmlserialize(content xmlagg(xmlelement("id", xmlelement("id2", id))).extract('/*') indent) a from foo;
select xmlserialize(content xmlagg(xmlelement("id", xmlelement("id2", id))).extract('/*') indent) a from foo
                                                                                                *
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-00907: missing right parenthesis


SQL> select xmlagg(xmlelement("id", xmlelement("id2", id))).transform(xmltype('<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
  2   xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
  3   <xsl:output omit-xml-declaration="yes" indent="yes"/>
  4   <xsl:template match="node()|@*">
  5    <xsl:copy>
  6     <xsl:apply-templates select="node()|@*"/>
  7    </xsl:copy>
  8   </xsl:template>
  9  </xsl:stylesheet>')) a from foo;

A
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
<id>
  <id2>1</id2>
</id>
<id>
  <id2>2</id2>
</id>

and 11.2.0.2/3:

SQL> select xmlagg(xmlelement("id", xmlelement("id2", id))).extract('/*') a from foo;

A
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
<id><id2>1</id2></id><id><id2>2</id2></id>

SQL> select xmlserialize(content xmlagg(xmlelement("id", xmlelement("id2", id))).extract('/*') indent) a from foo;

A
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
<id>
  <id2>1</id2>
</id>
<id>
  <id2>2</id2>
</id>

SQL> select xmlagg(xmlelement("id", xmlelement("id2", id))).transform(xmltype('<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
  2   xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
  3   <xsl:output omit-xml-declaration="yes" indent="yes"/>
  4   <xsl:template match="node()|@*">
  5    <xsl:copy>
  6     <xsl:apply-templates select="node()|@*"/>
  7    </xsl:copy>
  8   </xsl:template>
  9  </xsl:stylesheet>')) a from foo;

A
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

<id>
 <id2>1</id2>
</id>
<id>
 <id2>2</id2>
</id>

in short, to do this version agnositc, you should use a XSL. if you’re only trying this for adhoc stuff, then extract is shorter to type on 10g and xmlserializeis shorter on 11g.