How to convert a xml file to sql query - sql

Question

I need some help on converting an xml file to an sql query file. Is it possible to convert it?
<mob_proto isOldStructure="false">
<Mob vnum="101" name="??" localizedname="Cão Selvagem" type="0" rank="0" battle_type="0" level="1" event_type="0" mob_color="0" />
</mob_proto>

Answer 1

Just to give you a sense of how XSLT might be used to do this, consider the following stylesheet:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<xsl:transform xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="2.0">
<xsl:output method="text" doctype-public="XSLT-compat" omit-xml-declaration="yes" encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes" />
<xsl:template match="//Mob">
SELECT *
FROM <xsl:value-of select="local-name()" />
WHERE vnum = <xsl:value-of select="#vnum" />
AND name = '<xsl:value-of select="#name" />'
</xsl:template>
</xsl:transform>
This would convert any Mob element to a select query, using 'Mob' as the table name, and filtering on vnum and name as column names. You can play with this here:
http://xsltransform.net/nc4NzQA
The advantages of this approach:
XSLT is a well defined standards based langauge with broad platform support.
XSLT will take care of a lot of XML specific issues very neatly
You could potentially keep all your query transformation logic in one place
Disadvantages:
Your queries will likely be limited to a particular syntax/platform
XSLT can be challenging to learn well and may be difficult for your team to maintain
Another option would be to pass your XML to your database engine. If, for example, you're using SQL Server, you could write a stored procedure that takes an XML parameter and then uses OPENXML (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms175160.aspx) to extract/parse the XML that is sent in. Postgres also has XML support: http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.1/static/functions-xml.html, as does Mysql: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/load-xml.html, and Oracle I'm sure does as well.
Advantages to this approach:
May not be as steep a learning curve for a proficient SQL developer who doesn't know XSLT
May be able to easily load data directly into database (either keeping it in XML format or shredding it to tables) more efficiently
Disadvantages:
Support will vary from one DB platform to another
May put additional processing strain on your DB server that could be more efficiently handled by an XSLT processor on another machine (especially if you're dealing with a complex document structure).
Of course, you could also use any number of other custom utilities to do this, but XSLT or SQL XML support are probably your best bets.