Convert CLOB to XMLType in SELECT statement ?

Question

Hi XML Xperts,
In my Oracle 9.2.0.3 I have 1 table (tab1) with 2 cols (col1 as XMLType and col2 as CLOB). I Inserted in both fields the following same XML data :
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<TABLE_NAME>MY_TABLE</TABLE_NAME>
With the following statement, I can get the data from col1 which is a XMLType column :
SELECT a.col1.extract('//TABLE_NAME/text()').getStringVal() AS "Table Name"
FROM tab1 a
WHERE a.col1.existsNode('/TABLE_NAME') = 1;
How to get the same data FROM col2 whcih is a CLOB column ? Is it possible to transform the CLOB to XMLType in the SELECT statement ?
Note : I cannot change the type of the colulmn col2 to XMLType
Thanks in advance.
Phil

Answer 1

I tested it in 10g and it seems to be OK.
create table clobtoxml(xmldata clob);
insert into clobtoxml
values('<RootE><FirstNode>This is CLOB data to XML</FirstNode></RootE>');
commit;
select sys.xmltype(xmldata).extract('/RootE/FirstNode/text()').getStringVal() from clobtoxml;
This is CLOB data to XML
select sys.xmltype(xmldata).extract('/*') from clobtoxml;
<RootE>
<FirstNode>This is CLOB data to XML</FirstNode>
</RootE>
Ben