How to retrieve values in XML into a plsql table type

Question

Hi
I have an XML doc like below which is a Web Service response message.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<SOAP-ENV:Envelope
xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"
xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
<SOAP-ENV:Body>
<GetOrgInput xmlns="http://www.example.org/ComplianceServices">
<ProgramName>PgmA-PgmB</ProgramName>
<ItemName>800 ADSL</ItemName>
<Orgs>923</Orgs>
<Orgs>1163</Orgs>
<Orgs>1103</Orgs>
</GetOrgInput>
</SOAP-ENV:Body>
</SOAP-ENV:Envelope>
From the above doc you could see that i have multiple occurrences of "Orgs" element. Usually i am using the .extract and .getSTringVal() to retrieve the values as below.
l_string_variable := p_response.doc.extract('//'||p_name||'/child::text()',p_namespace).getStringVal();
But in this case if i do that, i am getting value as 92311631103. I need to get them into a table type of number. Pls advice me on how to achieve this.
Thanks
PKV

Answer 1

I'm guessing this is a bug that Oracle fixed when 10.2 came out. I can reproduce your lack of results on 10.1.0.4 and as my post above shows, it works correctly on 10.2.0.4.
Here's a modification to the script that shows what is going on as I was debugging this. (It took me a bit to realize the difference as it wasn't what I was expecting)
declare
   p_response_doc XMLTYPE;
   l_new_doc      XMLTYPE;
begin
   p_response_doc := XMLTYPE('<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<soapenv:Envelope
xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
<soapenv:Body>
<GetOrgOutput xmlns="http://www.example.org/ComplianceServices">
<CompliantOrgs>1163</CompliantOrgs>
<CompliantOrgs>1103</CompliantOrgs>
</GetOrgOutput>
</soapenv:Body>
</soapenv:Envelope>');
   SELECT p_response_doc.extract('/*/*/*/CompliantOrgs','xmlns="http://www.example.org/ComplianceServices"')
     INTO l_new_doc
      FROM dual;
   dbms_output.put_line(l_new_doc.getStringVal());
   dbms_output.put_line('before loop');
   FOR r_rec IN (SELECT value(t) val
--   FOR r_rec IN (SELECT extractvalue(value(t)
--      , '/CompliantOrgs'
--      , 'xmlns="http://www.example.org/ComplianceServices"' ) val
      -- BULK COLLECT INTO l_nm_array
      FROM TABLE(
        XMLSequence(
          p_response_doc.extract('/*/*/*/CompliantOrgs','xmlns="http://www.example.org/ComplianceServices"')
        ) t
   ) LOOP
      dbms_output.put_line(r_rec.val.getStringVal());
--      dbms_output.put_line(r_rec.val);
   END LOOP;
   dbms_output.put_line('After output');
end;On 10.2.0.4 this produces
<CompliantOrgs xmlns="http://www.example.org/ComplianceServices">1163</CompliantOrgs>
<CompliantOrgs xmlns="http://www.example.org/ComplianceServices">1103</CompliantOrgs>
before loop
<CompliantOrgs xmlns="http://www.example.org/ComplianceServices">1163</CompliantOrgs>
<CompliantOrgs xmlns="http://www.example.org/ComplianceServices">1103</CompliantOrgs>
After outputOn 10.1.0.4 it produces
<CompliantOrgs xmlns="http://www.example.org/ComplianceServices">1163</CompliantOrgs>
<Complian tOrgs xmlns="http://www.example.org/ComplianceServices">1103</CompliantOrgs>
before loop
<CompliantOrgs>1163</CompliantOrgs>
<CompliantOrgs>1103</CompliantOrgs>
After outputAs you can see, Oracle is removing (well technically not adding) the default namespace to the extracted nodes. To compensate, you need to change your loop to look like
   FOR r_rec IN (SELECT extractvalue(value(t)
      , '/CompliantOrgs') val
--      , 'xmlns="http://www.example.org/ComplianceServices"' ) val
      -- BULK COLLECT INTO l_nm_array
      FROM TABLE(
        XMLSequence(
          p_response_doc.extract('//CompliantOrgs','xmlns="http://www.example.org/ComplianceServices"')
        ) t
   ) LOOPso that extractValue is not expecting any namespaces associated with the nodes.
I would suggest you document this so you will know why things break if you upgrade to 10.2 or later at some point in the future.