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Path Expressions (XQuery)

XQuery path expressions locate nodes, such as element, attribute, and text nodes, in a document. The result of a path expression always occurs in document order without duplicate nodes in the result sequence. In specifying a path, you can use either unabbreviated or abbreviated syntax. The following information focuses on the unabbreviated syntax. Abbreviated syntax is described later in this topic.

Note

Because the sample queries in this topic are specified against the xml type columns, CatalogDescription and Instructions, in the ProductModel table, you should familiarize yourself with the contents and structure of the XML documents stored in these columns. For more information, see xml Data Type Representation in the AdventureWorks2008R2 Database.

A path expression can be relative or absolute. Following is a description of both of these:

  • A relative path expression is made up of one or more steps separated by one or two slash marks (/ or //). For example, child::Features is a relative path expression, where Child refers only to child nodes of the context node. This is the node that is currently being processed. The expression retrieves the <Features> element node children of the context node.

  • An absolute path expression starts with one or two slash marks (/ or //), followed by an optional, relative path. For example, the initial slash mark in the expression, /child::ProductDescription, indicates that it is an absolute path expression. Because a slash mark at the start of an expression returns the document root node of the context node, the expression returns all the <ProductDescription> element node children of the document root.

    If an absolute path starts with a single slash mark, it may or may not be followed by a relative path. If you specify only a single slash mark, the expression returns the root node of the context node. For an XML data type, this is its document node.

A typical path expression is made up of steps. For example, the absolute path expression, /child::ProductDescription/child::Summary,contains two steps separated by a slash mark.

  • The first step retrieves the <ProductDescription> element node children of the document root.

  • The second step retrieves the <Summary> element node children for each retrieved <ProductDescription> element node, which in turn becomes the context node.

A step in a path expression can be an axis step or a general step.

Axis Step

An axis step in a path expression has the following parts.

  • axis
    Defines the direction of movement. An axis step in a path expression that starts at the context node and navigates to those nodes that are reachable in the direction specified by the axis.

  • node test
    Specifies the node type or node names to be selected.

  • Zero or more optional predicates
    Filters the nodes by selecting some and discarding others.

The following examples use an axisstep in the path expressions:

  • The absolute path expression, /child::ProductDescription, contains only one step. It specifies an axis (child) and a node test (ProductDescription).

  • The relative path expression, child::ProductDescription/child::Features, contains two steps separated by a slash mark. Both steps specify a child axis. ProductDescription and Features are node tests.

  • The relative path expression, child::root/child::Location[attribute::LocationID=10],contains two steps separated by a slash mark. The first step specifies an axis (child) and a node test (root). The second step specifies all three components of an axis step: an axis (child), a node test (Location), and a predicate ([attribute::LocationID=10]).

For more information about the components of an axis step, see Specifying Axis in a Path Expression Step, Specifying Node Test in a Path Expression Step, and Specifying Predicates in a Path Expression Step.

General Step

A general step is just an expression that must evaluate to a sequence of nodes.

The XQuery implementation in SQL Server supports a general step as the first step in a path expression. Following are examples of path expressions that use general steps.

(/a, /b)/c
id(/a/b)

For more information about the id function see, id Function (XQuery).

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