Does nodes() or openxml returns rows in same order as it finds in xml? - sql

Question

I have an xml which i need to parse using openxml or nodes(). The xml contains few child tags that repeat with different values, as below.
<root>
<value>10</value>
<value>12</value>
<value>11</value>
<value>1</value>
<value>15</value>
<root>
For my code it is very important that i get all these rows returned in same order as in xml. I googled and gogled but nothing tells me if the #mp:id is always returned in same order as in xml. Or if nodes() return values in same order as it encounters them.
All I want to know if I can trust any of those two methods and be happy with proper order of rows.
P.S. excuse any errors or mistakes in above text, I dont enjoy typing codes in an android window either.

Answer 1

You can use row_number on the shredded XML like this.
declare #XML xml=
'<root>
<value>10</value>
<value>12</value>
<value>11</value>
<value>1</value>
<value>15</value>
</root>'
select value
from
(
select T.N.value('.', 'int') as value,
row_number() over(order by T.N) as rn
from #xml.nodes('/root/value') as T(N)
) as T
order by T.rn
Uniquely Identifying XML Nodes with DENSE_RANK
Update:
You can also use a numbers table like this;
declare #XML xml=
'<root>
<value>10</value>
<value>12</value>
<value>11</value>
<value>1</value>
<value>15</value>
</root>';
with N(Number) as
(
select Number
from master..spt_values
where type = 'P'
)
select #XML.value('(/root/value[sql:column("N.Number")])[1]', 'int')
from N
where N.Number between 1 and #XML.value('count(/root/value)', 'int')
order by N.Number

Answer 2

XPath allows you to select nodes explicitly by ordinal: '/root[1]/value[1]' is the first element, '/root[1]/value[2]' is the second etc. Also could use '(/root/value)[1]' and '(/root/value[2])'. This way you can select exactly the element you want, and selecting element 1 then element 2 then element 3 etc will give you controlled order. Slow, but controlled.
Updated P.S. Wouldn't this be nice to be true?
declare #x xml = '<root>
<value>10</value>
<value>12</value>
<value>11</value>
<value>1</value>
<value>15</value>
<root>';
select x.value(N'position()', N'int') as position,
x.value(N'.', 'int') as value
from #x.nodes(N'//root/value') t(x)
Unfortunately, is not...
Msg 2371, Level 16, State 1, Line 9
XQuery [value()]: 'position()' can only be used within a predicate or XPath selector
And the existence of this error makes me worry that order may be broken sometimes...