How to extract multiple xml element into individual tables? - sql

Question

I have XML data like this
DECLARE #input XML =
'<LicensingReportProcessResult>
<LicensingReport>
<Address key="3845HoopaLnLasVegasNV89169-3350U.S.A.">
<LineOne>3845 Hoopa Ln</LineOne>
<CityName>Las Vegas</CityName>
<StateOrProvinceCode>NV</StateOrProvinceCode>
<PostalCode>89169-3350</PostalCode>
<CountryCode>U.S.A.</CountryCode>
</Address>
<Person key="PersonPRI711284842">
<ExternalIdentifier>
<TypeCode>NAICProducerCode</TypeCode>
<Id>8001585</Id>
</ExternalIdentifier>
<BirthDate>1961-07-29</BirthDate>
</Person>
</LicensingReport>
</LicensingReportProcessResult>'
My T-SQL code to extract one specific set of elements:
-- extract into temp table
INSERT INTO #Address
SELECT
Tbl.Col.value('#Address', 'NVARCHAR(100)'),
Tbl.Col.value('#City', 'NVARCHAR(100)'),
Tbl.Col.value('#State', 'NVARCHAR(100)'),
Tbl.Col.value('#PostalCode', 'NVARCHAR(100)'),
Tbl.Col.value('#CountryCode', 'NVARCHAR(100)')
FROM
#xml.nodes('//LicensingReportProcessResult/LicensingReport/Address') Tbl(Col)
-- verify results
SELECT * FROM #Address
I want to insert different element data into separate tables. Like Address data into an Address table and Person data into a Person table. As new elements are added I want to save data into separate tables.
Can someone help?

Answer 1

Are you asking how to dynamically define new tables for top level xml elements in a document? You can do that with any Xml Serialization library that reads a document and returns the elements and attributes as a tree, and from that metadata create a table definition that you then execute in sql.
Also consider simply storing your data as xml, perhaps with a defined schema, and then writing queries or views that extract the various elements using XPath or the xml data type methods as you already do, instead of extracting into physical tables.