Report Query - Download data - converts special characters

Question

When I'm doing a select from a table which has a "<" or ">" sign it is being changed to &lt; or &gt; when I view the XML data that is being downloaded. Is there any way to prevent it from doing this?

Answer 1

What I'm finding is that when master detail data is dumped in XML it is being dumped as individual rows.
<DOC>
<ID>12341</ID>
<RC>23456</RC>
</DOC>
<DOC>
<ID>12342</ID>
<RC>34567</RC>
</DOC>
<DOC>
<ID>12343</ID>
<RC>45678</RC>
</DOC>
What I'm trying to achieve is this ...
<DOC>
<ID>12341</ID>
<RCROW>
<RC>23456</RC>
<RC>34567</RC>
<RC>45678</RC>
</RCROW>
</DOC>
This is how one should expect the data to look... not as my first example. Can I do this with plsql... most definitely. However, the report query tool wants a select statement. You can add queries but it will simply output the data as a single row regardless of how many queries you create. Furthermore I thought I might try to introduce subnodes by encapsulating the data with <> but unfortunately any special data will get converted to html code. So when I read it with text viewer software I can see these replaced with &lt; and &gt; Within the report query tool you can't create a select which will format the data (as per my second example). I'm trying to use reporting software which will expect the data as per my second example so that it will appear grouped and sorted properly but it won't work if the rows are being treated as individual lines as in my first example. I'm not sure why Oracle would not allow you to sort and group it this way since any XML data I've seen, seems to be grouped as per my second example and not as they have implemented it. I have no idea as to how to create this format to the data using report queries given the data will get converted to HTML.