The member function calculates the given XPATH expression xpath_expn using the XML entity of the instance as a context node. If a namespace_map parameter is given then the function adds namespace declarations from this parameter into the beginning of xpath_expn before the evaluation. The function returns the first result of the XPATH evaluation or NULL if there are no results. If the result is an XML entity then it is converted into a non-schema based instance of XMLType.
The function returns a non-schema based XMLType instance, NULL or a value of any other type
This populates a table with XML data and then selects 'ename' element from the appropriate record.
create table TEST_XMLS (I integer primary key, XMLVAL XMLType); insert into TEST_XMLS values (1, XMLType('<emp><empno>221</empno><ename>John</ename></emp>')); insert into TEST_XMLS values (2, XMLType('<po><pono>331</pono><poname>PO_1</poname></po>')); insert into TEST_XMLS values (3, XMLType('<oil-rig id="14a" water="0.413"/><oil-rig id="14b" water="0.402"/>')); select e.XMLVAL.extract ('//ename').getCLobVal() as ENAME from TEST_XMLS as e where e.XMLVAL.existsNode('/emp/empno') ENAME NVARCHAR _______________________________________________________________________________ <ename>John</ename> 1 Rows. -- 00000 msec.