How to export XML using a SQL Server query?

Question

Let\'s say I have a table Employee like this

EmpID, EmpName

1    , hatem

and I write a query: select * from Employee for xm

Answer 1

If you only need to store the XML and not do anything else to it, this is probably the easiest way to accomplish this - using straight simple ADO.NET:

string query = "SELECT EmployeeID, LastName, FirstName, Title, BirthDate, HireDate FROM dbo.Employees FOR XML AUTO";

using(SqlConnection _con = new SqlConnection("server=(local);database=Northwind;integrated security=SSPI;"))
using (SqlCommand _cmd = new SqlCommand(query, _con))
{
    _con.Open();
    string result = _cmd.ExecuteScalar().ToString();
    _con.Close();

    File.WriteAllText(@"D:\test.xml", result);
}

This will create a file D:\test.xml (or change that to match your system) and will put those XML tags into that file.

The SqlCommand object also has a .ExecuteXmlReader() method which would return an XmlReader object to scan and manipulate the XML - not just return a string. Use whatever makes the most sense to you!

PS: also, the output of FOR XML AUTO is a bit .... let's say ... suboptimal. It uses the dbo.Employee as it's main XML tag and so forth... with SQL Server 2008, I would strongly recommend you look into using FOR XML PATH instead - it allows you to tweak and customize the layout of the XML output.

Compare your original XML output with FOR XML AUTO

against this query - just to see the difference:

SELECT 
    [EmployeeID] AS '@ID',
    [LastName], [FirstName],
    [Title],
    [BirthDate], [HireDate]
FROM 
    [dbo].[Employees]
FOR XML PATH('Employee'), ROOT('Employees')

Output is:

  
    Davolio
    Nancy
    
    1948-12-08T00:00:00
    1992-05-01T00:00:00
  
  
    Fuller
    Andrew
    
    1952-02-19T00:00:00
    1992-08-14T00:00:00