XML publishing is the process of formatting the results of an SQL query as XML. SQL query results are mapped to an XML format according to a mapping specification provided by the user.
To publish XML from Vantage, perform the following tasks:
- Define the SQL query whose output you want to publish as XML.
- Define a mapping from the SQL query results to the desired XML structure.
- Store the mapping so that it can be easily referenced, for example, in a stylesheet repository table.
- Call one of the XML publishing stored procedures (XMLPUBLISH or XMLPUBLISH_STREAM) with the following arguments:
- The SQL query you defined in step 1
- The mapping you saved in step 3
You define the XML publishing mapping as an XSLT stylesheet that defines a transformation from the canonical representation of the query result to the desired XML output structure.
If you pass NULL as the Xslt (mapping definition) argument to XMLPUBLISH or XMLPUBLISH_STREAM, the stored procedures will return the canonical XML representation as output.