Manipulating Namespace Attributes

Hello All:
I have a fair amount of SQL 2000 experience and recentlty have begun
working with SQL 2005. SPecificall, I am working with the XML data
type in the following scenario:
-A third party vendor provides us with a data source containing a
column of datatype XML. I would like to search through the nodes of
the XML for specific elements and attributes. The problem is that some
of the XML fields contain namespaces (meaning that my xQuery must
declare the namespace as well), and some of the values in this same XML
column do not have namespaces declared. I have no control over the
data sent to me, but what I would like to do is remove the namespace
attribute where it exists. I have tried the modify method, but it does
not work on the xmlns attribute.
I can transform the field to nText and then parse this out, but I would
perfer to avoid any extra steps since it is a large quantity of data
and some of these xml fields are quite large.
I would be grateful for any advice on how to handle this.
Thanks in advance.
Rich FHave you tried to search using a namespace wildcard?
Like /*.foo/*:attr
namespace declarations are not exposed as attribute and cannot easily be
changed. If you need to change arbitrary namespaces to a specific namespace
you should probably write an XSLT transform.
Best regards
Michael
<eastegg_1970@.yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1164911773.276725.95190@.j72g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> Hello All:
> I have a fair amount of SQL 2000 experience and recentlty have begun
> working with SQL 2005. SPecificall, I am working with the XML data
> type in the following scenario:
> -A third party vendor provides us with a data source containing a
> column of datatype XML. I would like to search through the nodes of
> the XML for specific elements and attributes. The problem is that some
> of the XML fields contain namespaces (meaning that my xQuery must
> declare the namespace as well), and some of the values in this same XML
> column do not have namespaces declared. I have no control over the
> data sent to me, but what I would like to do is remove the namespace
> attribute where it exists. I have tried the modify method, but it does
> not work on the xmlns attribute.
> I can transform the field to nText and then parse this out, but I would
> perfer to avoid any extra steps since it is a large quantity of data
> and some of these xml fields are quite large.
> I would be grateful for any advice on how to handle this.
> Thanks in advance.
> Rich F
>