XML assignments

XML data can be assigned to a column, but when the target is not a column, the XML data type can only be assigned to another XML data type.

When the target is a column (for example, data change statements), the source can be the XML data type, or CHAR, VARCHAR, CLOB, GRAPHIC, VARGRAPHIC, DBCLOB, BINARY, VARBINARY, or BLOB data types. When the source is not XML data, the source is implicitly parsed as if the XMLPARSE function is invoked with the STRIP WHITESPACE option. If the source data is graphic data, the encoding scheme must be Unicode.

All other data types cannot be assigned to a target of the XML data type.