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The XML Datatype

The XML Datatype is a datatype in the same way that integer, date, or CLOB are datatypes in SQL. Since SQL/XML allows a query to create XML instances, there must be a datatype that corresponds to these instances.

It is anticipated that the XML Datatype will be supported in JDBC 4.0. It is too early to say exactly how it will be used in that specification, but it is likely that it will retrieve XML values much like other values, and that XML values can be retrieved as text, DOM, or SAX events. This is the approach currently taken by DataDirect Connect for SQL/XML. To illustrate this, let's use a SQL/XML query to create a table with two columns, an integer containing the CustId and an XML column containing the XML output from the previous query. Here is the query:

Suppose the above query is in a string called sqlxmlString. Then the following Java code can be used to execute the query and retrieve values.

The XML Type also plays a second important role - relational databases now routinely store XML in individual column, and the XML Type provides a standard type for such columns, which is useful both in SQL and in JDBC.