Method DBMS_XMLQUERY.getXML() always inserts " ?xml version = '1.0'? " in output

Question

Method "SYS.DBMS_XMLQUERY.getXML()" seems to always want to prefix "<?xml version = '1.0'?>" to the returned output.
I don't think this is always called for.
I want to extract data from the database as an XML fragment. Outside of the RDBMS, I would then combine multiple fragments together into a larger XML document. If each fragment is prefixed with "<?xml version = '1.0'?>", I have to add logic to strip out this offending line.
I tried method setXslt(). Even when my XSL stylesheet transforms the XML into HTML or TEXT, the output gets prefixed with "<?xml version = '1.0'?>", which I feel is wrong.
Question: Is there any way to instruct DBMS_XMLQUERY to omit "<?xml version = '1.0'?>" ?
Thanks!
Louis

Answer 1

Hi,
Use DBMS_XMLGEN.getXMLType to retrieve the XML data into an XMLType variable.
Then, with getClobVal method, you can convert it to CLOB :
SQL> DECLARE
  2    v_xml XMLType;
  3    v_lob CLOB;
  4  BEGIN
  5    v_xml := dbms_xmlgen.getXMLType('select * from scott.emp where rownum = 1');
  6    v_lob := v_xml.getClobVal();
  7 
  8    dbms_output.put_line(v_lob);
  9  END;
10  /
<ROWSET>
<ROW>
  <EMPNO>7369</EMPNO>
  <ENAME>SMITH</ENAME>
  <JOB>CLERK</JOB>
  <MGR>7902</MGR>
  <HIREDATE>17/12/80</HIREDATE>
  <SAL>800</SAL>
  <DEPTNO>20</DEPTNO>
</ROW>
</ROWSET>
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed