SQL Server XML parsing first node attributes

Question

I have a XML column in database that may look like that ones:

<sql-connection-info name="myname" server="(local)\SQLEXPRESS" other-attribute="value" />

<oracle-connection-info name="othername" server="address" other-attribute="value" />

and so on. The names of nodes and attributes can be nearly anything. I need to iterate over the attribute/value pair on the first node. Every sample I have seen was for known node/attribute names.

When I tried to use

@xmlColumn.query("/@*")

I get this error

XQuery [query()]: Top-level attribute nodes are not supported.

Is this possible in TSQL? If yes how can I do this?

Answer 1

declare @xmlColumn xml = '<sql-connection-info name="myname" server="(local)\SQLEXPRESS" other-attribute="value" />'

select T.N.value('local-name(.)', 'varchar(max)') as Name,
       T.N.value('.', 'varchar(max)') as Value
from @xmlColumn.nodes('//@*') as T(N)

Result:

Name              Value
----------------  -------------------
name              myname
server            (local)\SQLEXPRESS
other-attribute   value

Answer 2

You can use

@xmlColumn.query("/node()[1]")

to get the first node of each entry. node() matches any element node. From your post I do not understand if you want to have eg the name attribute of the first node of your entry. Then you would use:

@xmlColumn.query("/node()[1]/@name")