How do I import data from XML to SQL Server?

Question

Can anyone help me work towards fixing my solution to import my XML data into a SQL Server Table? I have done my research, but this task has been very hard for me to accomplish. Everything I have found has worked for simple data, but my name and value are separate in the "website_details" section. This is why my script has not been working. I have around 200 XML files, some with more than a thousand records each to import, so I cannot change their structure. The data I am working with is considered confidential, so I have changed the value names and values to enable me to post this.

The first insert command for the websites table works perfectly and imports all of my data. The issue I am having is with the second insert command. The @xmlData.nodes definition is where I think the issue is. In the "website_details" section I am having a hard time defining the structure because the name and value are separate unlike the other information.

Just to give an overview of my database at the moment it consists of two tables. They are websites and website_details . The Web_ID column is included in both tables and is the foreign key that connects website_details to websites. I also have a view that I am using to combine my data called website_view .

I have been working on this for a little over couple of weeks, and have finally concluded that I need a little help to get this going.

Here is sample data pulled from my XML file:

<WEBSITES>
    <WEBSITE>
        <WEBSITE_ID>sta001</WEBSITE_ID>
        <WEBSITE_ALTERNATE_ID/>
        <WEBSITE_VERSION>4</WEBSITE_VERSION>
        <TYPE>DYNAMIC</TYPE>
        <NAME>TEST WEBSITE</NAME>
        <WEBSITE_DETAILS>
            <WEBSITE_DETAIL>
                <NAME>COST</NAME>
                <VALUE>500</VALUE>
                <INHERITED>false</INHERITED>
            </WEBSITE_DETAIL>
            <WEBSITE_DETAIL>
                <NAME>LANGUAGE</NAME>
                <VALUE>EN</VALUE>
                <INHERITED>false</INHERITED>
            </WEBSITE_DETAIL>
            <WEBSITE_DETAIL>
                <NAME>DATABASE</NAME>
                <VALUE/>
                <INHERITED>false</INHERITED>
            </WEBSITE_DETAIL>
        </WEBSITE_DETAILS>
    </WEBSITE>
    <WEBSITE>
        <Website_ID>mmn023</WEBSITE_ID>
        <WEBSITE_ALTERNATE_ID/>
        <WEBSITE_VERSION>3</WEBSITE_VERSION>
        <TYPE>DYNAMIC</TYPE>
        <NAME>TEST WEBSITE 2</NAME>
        <WEBSITE_DETAILS>
            <WEBSITE_DETAIL>
                <NAME>COST</NAME>
                <VALUE>750</VALUE>
                <INHERITED>false</INHERITED>
            </WEBSITE_DETAIL>
            <WEBSITE_DETAIL>
                <NAME>LANGUAGE</NAME>
                <VALUE>RU</VALUE>
                <INHERITED>false</INHERITED>
            </WEBSITE_DETAIL>
            <WEBSITE_DETAIL>
                <NAME>DATABASE</NAME>
                <VALUE>TRUE</VALUE>
                <INHERITED>false</INHERITED>
            </WEBSITE_DETAIL>
        </WEBSITE_DETAILS>
    </WEBSITE>
</WEBSITES>

Here is the stored procedure I am using:

USE [websitesDB]
GO
SET ANSI_NULLS ON
GO
SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON
GO
ALTER PROCEDURE [dbo].[SP_website_import] (
 @xmlData XML ,
 @retValue varchar(100) OUTPUT
)

AS
BEGIN
SET @retValue='Failed';



INSERT INTO  [websites](
[Web_ID],
[Web_Version],
[Web_Type],
[Web_Name]
)

SELECT
[Table].[Column].value('WEBSITE_ID [1]', 'nvarchar(100)'),
[Table].[Column].value('WEBSITE_VERSION [1]', 'nvarchar(100)'),
[Table].[Column].value('TYPE [1]', 'nvarchar(100)'),
[Table].[Column].value('NAME [1]', 'nvarchar(100)')

 FROM @xmlData.nodes('/ WEBSITES / WEBSITE') as [Table]([Column])
IF(@@ROWCOUNT > 0 )
  SET @retValue='SUCCESS';


INSERT INTO  [website_details](
[Web_ID],
[cost],
[language],
[database]
)

SELECT
[Table].[Column].value('WEBSITE_ID [1]', 'nvarchar(100)'),
[Table].[Column].value('COST [1]', 'nvarchar(100)'),
[Table].[Column].value('LANGUAGE [1]', 'nvarchar(100)'),
[Table].[Column].value('DATABASE [1]', 'nvarchar(100)')

 FROM @xmlData.nodes('/ WEBSITES / WEBSITE / WEBSITE_DETAILS') as [Table]([Column])
IF(@@ROWCOUNT > 0 )
  SET @retValue='SUCCESS'

;

Answer 1

When working in XQuery on SQL Server i like to got directly to the node i need data from, when working with data islands, then traverse back using "../". For example getting the WEBSITE_ID from the WEBSITE_DETAIL island you can use the following.

SELECT
[Table].[Column].value('../../WEBSITE_ID[1]', 'nvarchar(100)'),
[Table].[Column].value('NAME[1]', 'nvarchar(100)'),
[Table].[Column].value('VALUE[1]', 'nvarchar(100)'),
[Table].[Column].value('INHERITED[1]', 'nvarchar(100)')
FROM @xmlData.nodes('/WEBSITES/WEBSITE/WEBSITE_DETAILS/WEBSITE_DETAIL') as [Table]([Column])