XQuery join nodes

Hi,
Is there a way to join nodes using for loop. for example i have

<name>
<alt>test1</alt>
<alt>test2</alt>
<alt>test3</alt>
</name>

here i want the result as test1;test2;test3

is there a posibility to achieve this.

thanks

----------
dnandhak

dnandhak wrote:

> Is there a way to join nodes using for loop. for example i have
>
> <name>
> <alt>test1</alt>
> <alt>test2</alt>
> <alt>test3</alt>
> </name>
>
> here i want the result as test1;test2;test3

With XQuery 1.0 you can simply do
string-join(/name/alt, ';')

Unfortunately MS SQL Server does not provide the string-join function so
it is getting ugly:

DECLARE @x xml;
SET @x = N'<name>
<alt>test1</alt>
<alt>test2</alt>
<alt>test3</alt>
</name>';

SELECT @x.query('(for $a in name/alt[position() != last()] return
concat($a, ";"), data(name/alt[position() = last()]))');


--

Martin Honnen --- MVP XML
http://JavaScript.FAQTs.com/