Parsing an xml referencing an external DTD in PLSQL

Question

Hello,
I am using Oracle 9.2.0.3 on HPUX 11i. I want to use DBMS_XMLPARSER to
process XML documents stored in a table as CLOBs. In the documents theres a
DOCTYPE tag <!DOCTYPE myDocType SYSTEM "DTD/myDTD.dtd">.
The following code returns :
ORA-31001: Invalid resource handle or path name "/DTD/myDTD.dtd"
ORA-06512: at "XDB.DBMS_XMLDOM", line 3840
ORA-06512: at "XDB.DBMS_XMLDOM", line 3883
My utl_file_dir parameter is set to '*'
The error comes form the call : aNodeList :=
DBMS_XMLDOM.getElementsByTagName(aDoc, 'myDocType') ;
The same code using the XDK works fine just replacing DBMS_XMLPARSER with
XMLPARSER, DBMS_XMLDOM with XMLDOM... but is slow
I also tried to remove the DOCTYPE tag and it works fine and fast.
Do you have any idea of what I could do to make the DTD regognized.
Thanks a lot
David
DECLARE
aParser DBMS_XMLPARSER.PARSER ;
aDoc DBMS_XMLDOM.DOMDOCUMENT ;
aNodeList DBMS_XMLDOM.DOMNodeList ;
aNode DBMS_XMLDOM.DOMNode ;
aNodeAttr DBMS_XMLDOM.DOMNode ;
aNodeAttrList DBMS_XMLDOM.DOMNamedNodeMap ;
CURSOR C_test IS
SELECT payload
FROM TEST ;
BEGIN
aParser := DBMS_XMLPARSER.newParser ;
DBMS_XMLPARSER.setValidationMode(aParser, FALSE) ;
DBMS_XMLPARSER.setBaseDir(aParser, '/opt/test') ;
FOR R_test IN C_test LOOP
DBMS_XMLPARSER.parseClob(aParser, R_test.payload) ;
aDoc := DBMS_XMLPARSER.getDocument(aParser) ;
aNodeList := DBMS_XMLDOM.getElementsByTagName(aDoc, 'myDocType') ;
IF DBMS_XMLDOM.isNull(aDoc) THEN
DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE('Doc IS NULL') ;
ELSE
FOR idx IN 0..(DBMS_XMLDOM.getLength(aNodeList)-1) LOOP
aNode := DBMS_XMLDOM.item(aNodeList, idx) ;
dbms_output.put_line(DBMS_xmldom.getNodeName(aNode)) ;
dbms_output.put_line(DBMS_xmldom.getNodeValue(aNode)) ;
aNodeAttrList := DBMS_XMLDOM.getAttributes(aNode) ;
FOR idx1 IN 0..(DBMS_XMLDOM.getLength(aNodeAttrList)-1) LOOP
aNodeAttr := DBMS_XMLDOM.item(aNodeAttrList, idx1) ;
dbms_output.put_line(DBMS_xmldom.getNodeName(aNodeAttr)
|| ' = '||DBMS_xmldom.getNodeValue (aNodeAttr)) ;
END LOOP ;
END LOOP ;
END IF ;
END LOOP ;
DBMS_XMLPARSER.freeParser(aParser) ;
END ;

Answer 1

For security purposes the DBMS_XMLPARSER and DBMS_XMLDOM package will not access files on the local file system. To allow the DTD to be resolved you will need to create a DTD folder in the root of the XML DB repository and then load the DTD into that folder. Ensure that the ACL on the DTD folder and DTD document allow the user performing the parsing read access to the docuemnt. You can verify this by connecting as the user in question and performing
select xdburitype('/DTD/myDTD.dtd').getCLOB() from dual