DBMS_XMLDOM.WRITETOFILE overloading

Question

Hello all. Quick question. I'm running into memory issues when creating my xml file using the DBMS_XMLDOM oracle 9i package. I'd like to write out the file initially and then append to it using DBMS_XMLDOM.WRITETOFILE throughout my program. Similar to "open_mode" using utl_file.fopen.
Is this possible?

Answer 1

In your example, how is the marco.xml file not getting written over each time with the next iteration of rc? Once you exit the loop, is that when the doc element is freed. Prior to that does the writetofile simply keep appending?
Here is a sample piece of my code
declare
   doc dbms_xmldom.DOMDocument;
   main_node dbms_xmldom.DOMNode;
   root_node dbms_xmldom.DOMNode;
   incident_node dbms_xmldom.DOMNode;
   item_node dbms_xmldom.DOMNode;
   root_elmt dbms_xmldom.DOMElement;
   item_elmt dbms_xmldom.DOMElement;
   item_text dbms_xmldom.DOMText;
   v_clob      CLOB := 'a';
   v_xml VARCHAR2(32767);
   output utl_file.file_type;
begin
   -- get document
    doc := dbms_xmldom.newDOMDocument;
    -- create root element
    main_node := dbms_xmldom.makeNode(doc);
    root_elmt := dbms_xmldom.createElement(doc, 'Incidents');   
    dbms_xmldom.setAttribute(root_elmt, 'xmlns','http://www.claimsuite.com'); 
    dbms_xmldom.setAttribute(root_elmt, 'xmlns:xsi', 'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance');
    dbms_xmldom.setAttribute(root_elmt, 'xsi:schemaLocation', 'http://www.claimsuite.com ClaimsuiteShellUS.xsd');
    root_node := dbms_xmldom.appendChild(main_node, dbms_xmldom.makeNode(root_elmt)); 
   for i in 1 .. 2 loop
      item_elmt := dbms_xmldom.createElement(doc, 'Incident');
      incident_node := dbms_xmldom.appendChild(root_node, dbms_xmldom.makeNode(item_elmt));
      --CrawfordHandlingOfficeReference
      item_elmt := dbms_xmldom.createElement(doc, 'HandlingOfficeReference');     
      item_node := dbms_xmldom.appendChild(incident_node, dbms_xmldom.makeNode(item_elmt));
      item_text := dbms_xmldom.createTextNode(doc, 'HandlingOfficeRef');
      item_node := dbms_xmldom.appendChild(item_node, dbms_xmldom.makeNode(item_text));
   end loop;
   -- instead of writing to file, it writes to clob 
   dbms_xmldom.writeToFile(doc, 'IO_DIR_SHL_RSG/test.xml','ISO-8859-1');
   -- free resources
   dbms_xmldom.freeDocument(doc);
end;Instead of having
dbms_xmldom.writeToFile(doc, 'IO_DIR_SHL_RSG/test.xml','ISO-8859-1');at the end, I'd like to continuously append to the test.xml file instead of storing the huge dbms_xmldom.DOMDocument in memory and then writing it out at the end.