Nested namespace definition is removed on insert into DB

Question

I have an XML document that is like this (drastically simplified):
<stuff:Foo xmlns:stuff="http://blah.com/stuff/">
<stuff:AnElement>Some data</stuff:AnElement>
<stuff:OtherThings>
<stuff:SpecialElement xmlns:stuff="http://blah.com/stuff/">
<stuff:Foo>a string</stuff:Foo>
<stuff:Bar>a different string.</struff:Bar>
</stuff:SpecialElement>
</stuff:OtherThings>
</stuff:Foo>
When this document is inserted into the database, the xmlns:stuff namespace definition is removed from the SpecialElement node. I am guessing that it is removed because it was deemed redundant since it is re-defining the "stuff" prefix to the same value it already had.
The problem is that the namespace string is important for another part of the application. Is there a way to prevent Berkley DB XML from removing it?

Answer 1

Hello,
The getDocument() API returns the XmlDocument object unparsed from the container so you get exactly what you inserted. When you query you are no longer getting the document itself (unless your query asks for it) but instead result nodes from within that document. The default serialization of those nodes behaves as I mentioned earlier -- it strips out unnecessary namespace decls. This is a function of the default serialization which has no special configuration to keep the namespaces.
In your application you can use XmlValue.asEventReader() to get an XmlEventReader interface to your results to serialize how you'd like. That's why that interface exists.
Regards,
George