XMLROW

The XMLROW function returns an XML value that is a well-formed XML document.

XMLROW(,expressionASqname-identifierOPTION¹ROW"row"ROWrow-nameAS ATTRIBUTES)

expression: The content of each XML element is specified by an expression. The data type of expression must not be ROWID or DATALINK or a distinct type that is based on ROWID or DATALINK. When AS ATTRIBUTES is specified, the data type of expression must not be XML or a distinct type that is based on XML. The expression can be any SQL expression. If the expression is not a simple column reference, an element name must be specified.
AS qname-identifier: Specifies the XML element name or attribute name as an SQL identifier. The qname-identifier must be of the form of an XML qualified name, or QName. See the W3C XML namespace specifications for more details on valid names. If the name is qualified, the namespace prefix must be declared within the scope. If qname-identifier is not specified, expression must be a column name. The element name or attribute name is created from the column name using the fully escaped mapping from a column name to a QName.
OPTION: Specifies additional options for constructing the XML value. If no OPTION clause is specified, the default behavior applies.
ROW row-name: Specifies the name of the element to which each row is mapped. If this option is not specified, the default element name is "row".
AS ATTRIBUTES: Specifies that each expression is mapped to an attribute value with column name or qname-identifier serving as the attribute name. AS ATTRIBUTES cannot be specified if any expression has a result data type of XML.

The result is an XML sequence containing the concatenation of the non-null input XML values.

The result of the function is an XML value. Null values in the input are ignored. If the result of any expression can be null, the result can be null; if the result of every expression is null, the result is the null value.

Notes

By default, each row in the result set is mapped to an XML value as follows:

Each row is transformed into an XML element named "row" and each expression is transformed into a nested element with the column name or qname-identifier as the element name.
The null handling behavior is NULL ON NULL. A null value for an expression maps to the absence of the subelement. If all expression values are null, the function returns a null value.
The binary encoding scheme for binary and FOR BIT DATA data types is base64Binary encoding.

Examples

Assume the following table T1 with columns C1 and C2:

 C1    C2
----  ----
  1     2
  -     2
  1     -
  -     -

The following example shows an XMLROW query and output fragment with default behavior, using a sequence of row elements to represent the table:
```
  SELECT XMLROW(C1, C2) FROM T1    
```
```
<row><C1>1</C1><C2>2</C2></row>
<row><C2>2</C2></row>
<row><C1>1</C1></row>
-
```
The following example shows an XMLROW query and output fragment with attribute centric mapping. Instead of appearing as nested elements, data is mapped to element attributes:
```
  SELECT XMLROW(C1, C2 OPTION AS ATTRIBUTES) FROM T1    
```
```
<row C1="1" C2="2"/>
<row C2="2"/>
<row C1="1"/>
-
```

The following example shows an XMLROW query and output fragment with the default <row> element replaced by <entry>. Columns C1 and C2 are returned as <column1> and <column2> elements, and the total of C1 and C2 is returned inside a <total> element:

  SELECT XMLROW(C1 AS "column1", C2 AS "column2",
               C1+C2 AS "total" OPTION ROW "entry") FROM T1

<entry><column1>1</column1><column2>2</column2><total>3</total></entry>
<entry><column2>2</column2></entry>
<entry><column1>1</column1></entry>
-