SQL Server 2000: Trouble with writing xml output

Question

I need to set a variable @XMLOutput to the value of the subquery in XMLformat.

The subquery works fine on its own, but when the whole query is run i get the error:

Incorrect syntax near XML.

SELECT @XMLOutput = (SELECT loc
                       FROM ghhsitemap url
                    FOR XML AUTO, Elements)

A second problem: when specifying @XMLOutput as a variable and set its data type to xml it says it is not a valid data type.

How can this be resolved?

Answer 1

This isn't supported in sql 2000. And don't bother trying to return it inside a correlated subquery either - that also will not work in sql 2000. Fun eh?

In you situation, since your xml is so straightforward I'd just build the xml as a string and return it.

DECLARE @XmlString varchar(500)
SELECT @XmlString = '<loc>' + Cast(loc as varchar(8)) + '</loc>' FROM ghhsitemap

Answer 2

XML datatype support wasn't included in SQL Server until SQL Server 2005.

Answer 3

Just declare @XMLOutput as a varchar()

Your syntax for setting values is wrong - it should be like this:

SELECT @XMLOutput = loc FROM ghhsitemap url FOR XML AUTO, Elements