get some rows into one column

#11

On Thu, 1 Nov 2007 05:40:36 -0000, Tony Rogerson wrote:

Quote:

Nah, I think text() + FOR XML certainly has the flavour of a kludge over
it. The syntax is anything about intuitive, and if the data include
ampersands or angle brackets, there are a few surprising waiting for us.

I disagree, true - it's unintuitive to relational folk but isn't most XML.

This the XML side of the SQL Server data engine and until you start learning
how it works, syntax etc... then I guess anything to do with XML is a
kludge.

The ampersand and angle brackets are not suprises, books online tells us
what the behaviour is, ampersand and square brackets both have meaning
within the XML which is what text() is giving us.

Hi Tony,

Whether intuitive or not, it still is a kludge in my eyes. The phrase
FOR XML does somewhat imply that it is intended to produce, well, XML,
don't you think? And if you use that to produce straight-text non-XML
output, then I have no other word for it than "kludge".

Though I also agree with Erland that it's better than any of the
alternatives

--
Hugo Kornelis, SQL Server MVP
My SQL Server blog: http://sqlblog.com/blogs/hugo_kornelis

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get some rows into one column

comp.databases.ms-sqlserver comp.databases.ms-sqlserver

Re: get some rows into one column - 11-01-2007 , 04:28 PM