"PLS-00172: string literal too long" When Writing XML file into a Table

Question

Hi.
I'm using DBMS_XMLStore to get a XML file into a db table. See the example below, I'm using that for my PL/SQL format. Problem is that because there're too many XML elements that I use in "xmldoc CLOB:= ...", I get "PLS-00172: string literal too long" error.
Can someone suggest a workaround?
THANKS!!!
DECLARE
insCtx DBMS_XMLStore.ctxType;
rows NUMBER;
xmldoc CLOB :=
'<ROWSET>
<ROW num="1">
<EMPNO>7369</EMPNO>
<SAL>1800</SAL>
<HIREDATE>27-AUG-1996</HIREDATE>
</ROW>
<ROW>
<EMPNO>2290</EMPNO>
<SAL>2000</SAL>
<HIREDATE>31-DEC-1992</HIREDATE>
</ROW>
</ROWSET>';
BEGIN
insCtx := DBMS_XMLStore.newContext('scott.emp'); -- get saved context
DBMS_XMLStore.clearUpdateColumnList(insCtx); -- clear the update settings
-- set the columns to be updated as a list of values
DBMS_XMLStore.setUpdateColumn(insCtx,'EMPNO');
DBMS_XMLStore.setUpdateColumn(insCtx,'SAL');
DBMS_XMLStore.setUpdatecolumn(insCtx,'HIREDATE');
-- Now insert the doc.
-- This will only insert into EMPNO, SAL and HIREDATE columns
rows := DBMS_XMLStore.insertXML(insCtx, xmlDoc);
-- Close the context
DBMS_XMLStore.closeContext(insCtx);
END;
/

Answer 1

You ask where am getting the XML doc. Well, am not
getting the doc itself.I either don't understand or I disagree. In your sample code, you're certainly creating an XML document-- your local variable "xmldoc" is an XML document.
DBMS_XMLSTORE package needs
to know the canonical format and that's what I
hardcoded. Again, I either don't understand or I disagree... DBMS_XMLStore more or less assumes the format of the XML document itself-- there's a ROWSET tag, a ROW tag, and a then whatever column tags you'd like. You can override what tag identifies a row, but the rest is pretty much assumed. Your calls to setUpdateColumn identifies what subset of column tags in the XML document you're interested in.
Later in code I use
DBMS_XMLStore.setUpdateColumn to specify which
columns are to be inserted.Agreed.
xmldoc CLOB :=
'<ROWSET>
<ROW num="1">
<KEY_OLD> Smoker </KEY_OLD>
<KEY_NEW> 3 </KEY_NEW>
<TRANSFORM> Specified </TRANSFORM>
<KEY_OLD> Smoker </KEY_OLD>
<VALUEOLD> -1 </VALUEOLD>
EW> -1 </VALUENEW>
     <DESCRIPTION> NA </DESCRIPTION>
</ROW>
ROWSET>';This is your XML document. You almost certainly want to be reading this from the file system and/or have it passed in from another procedure. If you hard-code the XML document, you're limited to a 32k string literal, which is almost certainly causing the error you were reporting initially.
As am writing this I'm realizing that I'm doing this
wrong, because I do need to read the XML file from
the filesystem (but insert the columns
selectively)...What I need to come up with is a proc
that would grab the XML file and do inserts into a
relational table. The XML file will change in the
future and that means that all my 'canonical format'
code will be broken. How do I deal with anticipated
change? Do I need to define/create an XML schema in
10g if am just inserting into one relat. table from
one XML file?What does "The XML file will change in the future" mean? Are you saying that the structure of the XML document will change? Or that the data in the XML document would change? Your code should only need to change if the structure of the document changes, which should be exceptionally uncommon and would only be an issue if you're adding another column that you want to work with, which would necessitate code changes.
I found an article where the issue of changing XML
file is dealt by using a XSL file (that's where I'd
define the 'canonical format'), but am having a
problem with creating one, because the source XML is
screwed up in terms of the format:
it's not <x> blah </x>
<x2> blah </x2>
x2="blah" x3="blah> ...etc
Can you point me in the right direction, please?You can certainly use something like the DBMS_XSLProcessor package to transform whatever XML document you have into an XML document in an appropriate format for the XMLStore package and pass that transformed XML document into something like your sample procedure rather than defining the xmldoc local variable with a hard-coded document. Of course, you'd need to write appropriate XSL code to do the actual transform.
Justin