No problem then. I just thought it'd be worth allowing more if it worked to do so. > I found other opened question - how we can translate empty tag to SQL value? > The Oracle should not to solve this question, but PostgreSQL does. Some > databases returns empty string.
Oracle doesn't solve the problem? it ERRORs?
Oracle returns NULL. But there are not any difference between NULL and empty string
Regards
Pavel
> I prefer return a empty string - not null in this case.
I agree, and that's consistent with how most XML is interpreted. XSLT for example considers <x></x> and <x/> to be pretty much the same thing. > The reason is simple > - Empty string is some information - and NULL is less information. When it > is necessary I can transform empty string to NULL - different direction is > not unique.
Yep, I definitely agree. The only issue is if people want a DEFAULT to be applied for empty tags. But that's something they can do in a post-process pass easily enough, since XMLTABLE is callable as a subquery / WITH expression / etc.