Syntax

Purpose

INSERTXMLCHILDBEFORE inserts one or more collection elements as children of target parent elements. The insertion for each target occurs immediately before a specified existing collection element. The existing XML document that is the target of the insertion can be schema-based or non-schema-based.

• XMLType_instance identifies the XML data that is the target of the insertion.

• XPath_string locates the parent elements within target-data; child-data is inserted under each parent element.

• child_expr is a relative XPath 1.0 expression that locates the existing child that will follow the inserted child-data. It must name a child element of the element indicated by parent-xpath, and it can include a predicate.

• value_expr is the XMLType child element data to insert. Each top-level element node in this argument must have the same data type as the element indicated by child_expr.

• The optional namespace_string specifies the namespace for the parent elements, existing child element, and child element XML data to be inserted.

Examples

The following example is similar to that for INSERTCHILDXML, but it adds a third /Owner node before the /Owner node added in the other example. The output of the query has been formatted for readability.

UPDATE warehouses
  SET warehouse_spec = INSERTCHILDXMLBEFORE(warehouse_spec, '/Warehouse/Building',
    'Owner[2]', XMLType('<Owner>ThirdOwner</Owner>'))
  WHERE warehouse_id = 3;

SELECT warehouse_name,
       EXTRACT(warehouse_spec, '/Warehouse/Building/Owner') "Owners"
  FROM warehouses
  WHERE warehouse_id = 3;

WAREHOUSE_NAME                      Owners
----------------------------------- ------------------------------
New Jersey                          <Owner>GrandCo</Owner>
                                    <Owner>ThirdOwner</Owner>
                                    <Owner>LesserCo</Owner>