Oracle XMLDB – is it a bag of spanners?

This is driving me nuts

There’s a new type called XMLtype.

I can retrieve data from it no problem.

I can update an entire node no problem using XMLUpdate method, but it won’t let me update attributes. If it does I can’t find an example anywhere.

If an attriibute wasn’t supplied but you want to put it in .. how do you do it? Only half of the necessary methods have been implemented.

For those non-UK readers – a bag of spanners means that it looks useful but isn’t because you can’t find the right one, after you’ve tried all 50 of them none of them fit. It’s also used to mean a really ugly person, as in face like a … but I’d never describe a fellow human being that way.

I’m looking at the DBMS_XML package but the documentation and examples are total crap. I’m convinced there used to be a halfway decent example in the manuals but it isn’t there any more.

I’m going to do it in Java. I’ve had enough.