XML data (SQL Server)

Applies to: SQL Server Azure SQL Database Azure SQL Managed Instance

SQL Server provides a powerful platform for developing rich applications for semi-structured data management. Support for XML is integrated into all the components in SQL Server in the following ways:

• The xml data type. XML values can be stored natively in an xml data type column that can be typed according to a collection of XML schemas, or left untyped. You can index the XML column.

• The ability to specify an XQuery query against XML data stored in columns and variables of the xml type.

• Enhancements to OPENROWSET to allow bulk loading of XML data.

• The FOR XML clause, to retrieve relational data in XML format.

• The OPENXML function, to retrieve XML data in relational format.

• XML compression provides a method to compress off-row XML data for both XML columns and indexes, improving capacity requirements. For more information, see CREATE TABLE (Transact-SQL) and CREATE INDEX (Transact-SQL). XML compression is available in SQL Server 2022 (16.x) and later versions, Azure SQL Database, and Azure SQL Managed Instance.

Next steps

• XML Data Type and Columns (SQL Server)
• XML Indexes (SQL Server)
• XML Schema Collections (SQL Server)
• FOR XML (SQL Server)
• OPENXML (Transact-SQL)

See also

• Examples of Bulk Import and Export of XML Documents (SQL Server)
• XQuery Language Reference (SQL Server)
• xml (Transact-SQL)