Help needed in extracting values from XML

Question

SAMPLE XML:
- <Form1>
- <Name>
<Ttl>MR</Ttl>
<Fore>ABC1</Fore>
<Sur>XYZ2</Sur>
</Name>
- <Address>
<Line>ADD_LINE_1</Line>
<Line>ADD_LINE_2</Line>
<PostCode>PST CDE</PostCode>
</Address>
<BirthDate>0001-01-01</BirthDate>
- <Details>
<TotalEarnings>1234567.00</TotalEarnings>
<TotalDeduction>12345.00</TotalDeduction>
</Details>
</Form1>
- <Form1>
- <Name>
<Ttl>MR</Ttl>
<Fore>ABC2</Fore>
<Sur>XYZ2</Sur>
</Name>
- <Address>
<Line>ADD_LINE_3</Line>
<Line>ADD_LINE_4</Line>
<PostCode>PST CDE</PostCode>
</Address>
<BirthDate>0002-02-02</BirthDate>
<Gender>female</Gender>
- <Details>
<TotalEarnings>12345.00</TotalEarnings>
<TotalDeduction>123.00</TotalDeduction>
</Details>
</Form1>
There can be any 'n' number of <Form1>'s in one XML.But I want to get only the details of the person whose TotalEarnings>1million. Details include
Name->Ttl,Fore,Sur
which in this case would be MR,ABC1,XYZ1
Address->Line,Line,Postcode
which in this case would be ADD_LINE_1,ADD_LINE_2,PST CDE
Birthdate
which in this case would be 0001-01-01
Gender
which in this case would be "null" as there is no Gender tag present
Details->TotalEarnings,TotalDeduction
which in this case would be 1234567.00,12345.00
The technique I was using is,
1. Convert to clob
2. User dbms_instr find the location of <Form1> in a loop
3. For every occurence of <Form1> I find <TotalEarnings> value and check if this is greater than 1 million.
4. If true, I use dbms_instr to get the values of all the tags inside <Form1>
5. The drawback of using dbms_instr is that it gets the value of first occurence of whatever sting we supply.In this case dbms_instr(xml,'<Gender>',position of Form1) will not return null whereas it will return "Female" from the next form. This is wrong as it doesnt belong to the person who earns more than a million.
Can anyone suggest a way to fetch the values that only belong to the form of the person who earns more than a million?

Answer 1

There can be any 'n' number of <Form1>'s in one
XML.Not if you want the XML to be valid there can't. You would need a root element around all the <Form1>'s to make it valid.
The technique I was using is,
1. Convert to clob
2. User dbms_instr find the location of <Form1> in a
loop
3. For every occurence of <Form1> I find
<TotalEarnings> value and check if this is greater
than 1 million.
4. If true, I use dbms_instr to get the values of all
the tags inside <Form1>
5. The drawback of using dbms_instr is that it gets
the value of first occurence of whatever sting we
supply.In this case
dbms_instr(xml,'<Gender>',position of Form1) will not
return null whereas it will return "Female" from the
next form. This is wrong as it doesnt belong to the
person who earns more than a million.
Can anyone suggest a way to fetch the values that
only belong to the form of the person who earns more
than a million?Why on earth are you using dbms_instr for this? Oracle has built in XML functionality for use against XMLTYPE data, such as the ExtractValue method and the use of XPATH expressions.
I'd suggest you start reading some of the manuals regarding XML functionality in Oracle rather than trying to manually parse it all.