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Querying Oracle directly from XML

with 7 comments

I’d gone through Doug Tidwell’s XSLT (2nd Edition), I was disappointed that there wasn’t any coverage in Chapter 9 about how to connect through an XSLT Processor to an Oracle database. Overall, the book is improved. I’d recommend it as a reference or a detailed read for the lost truth of XML. Seriously, it’s a very readable book.

I didn’t find anything through a quick search of the web, and I figured a little example might be nice. I used Xalan-Java of the example.  Xalan-Java is a convenient open source XSLT Processor, covered in an earlier blog. You can refer to that blog page for the download location and general configuration of Xalan-Java. There is one more configuration step after those in the other blog entry. You need to put the Oracle JDBC driver file in the class path. That’s where the Oracle class files are located. This example uses ojdbc5.jar from an Oracle Database 11g home on Windows:

C:\>SET CLASSPATH=%CLASSPATH%;C:\oracle\11.1.0\db_1\jdbc\lib\ojdbc5.jar

You can write this sample file, substituting a user, password, table and column (or two) from your own database:

The hidden rows didn’t fit nicely in the other image, but they’re required to make it work. There in the next image. They are the templates for handling columns and rows.

The command line generates an HTML page for you and redirects it to a file:

C:\> java org.apache.xalan.xslt.Process -XSL oracle_xml_query.xsl > sample.htm

or, the preferred syntax:

C:\> java org.apache.xalan.xslt.Process -XSL oracle_xml_query.xsl -OUT sample.htm

As per the request, here’s the native code for an XML direct query against an Oracle database.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
 xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
 xmlns:sql="org.apache.xalan.lib.sql.XConnection"
 extension-element-prefixes="sql">
<xsl:output method="html" />
<xsl:template match="/">
<xsl:variable
  name="movies"
  select="sql:new('oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver'
        ,'jdbc:oracle:thin:@mclaughlin11g:1521:orcl','plsql','plsql')" />
<xsl:variable name="streaming" select="sql:disableStreamingMode($movies)" />
<xsl:variable
  name="queryResults"
  select="sql:query($movies,'SELECT item_title, item_subtitle FROM item')" />
<html>
<head><title>Oracle Result Set</title></head>
<body style="font-family: sans-serif;">
<table border="1" cellpadding="5">
  <tr>
    <xsl:for-each select="$queryResults/sql/metadata/column-header">
      <th><xsl:value-of select="@column-label" /></th>
    </xsl:for-each>
  </tr>
  <xsl:apply-templates select="$queryResults/sql/row-set/row" />
</table>
</body>
</html>
<xsl:value-of select="sql:close($movies)" />
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="row">
  <tr><xsl:apply-templates select="col" /></tr>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="col">
  <td><xsl:value-of select="text()" /></td>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

Written by maclochlainn

August 29th, 2008 at 10:56 pm

Posted in Oracle,xml

Tagged with ,