Parsing nested XML into SQL table

Question

What would be the right way to parse the following XML block into SQL Server table according to desired layout (below)? Is it possible to do it with a single SELECT statemen

Answer 1

You can make use of a numbers table to pick the first, second, third etc row from the child elements. In this query I have limited the rows returned to the number if dates provided. If there are more values or descriptions than dates you have to modify the join to take that into account.

declare @XML xml = '

  some value
  other value
  
    2011-02-01T00:00:00
    2011-03-01T00:00:00
    2011-04-01T00:00:00
  
  
    0.019974
    0.005395
    0.004854
  
  
    this is row 1
    this is row 2
    this is row 3
  
'

;with Numbers as
(
  select number
  from master..spt_values
  where type = 'P'
)
select T.N.value('Parameter1[1]', 'varchar(50)') as Parameter1,
       T.N.value('Parameter2[1]', 'varchar(50)') as Parameter2,
       T.N.value('(Dates/dateTime[position()=sql:column("N.Number")])[1]', 'datetime') as Dates,
       T.N.value('(Values/double[position()=sql:column("N.Number")])[1]', 'float') as [Values],
       T.N.value('(Description/string[position()=sql:column("N.Number")])[1]', 'varchar(max)') as [Description]
from @XML.nodes('/ObjectData') as T(N)
  cross join Numbers as N
where N.number between 1 and (T.N.value('count(Dates/dateTime)', 'int'))