Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Querying an Oracle database using XSLT for dummies

In this post I will explain how you can query an Oracle database using XSLT technology and Xalan as your XML processor.

Requirements:
If you decide that you don't want to use an XML editor you will have to download Xalan and add the necessary libraries to your classpath before processing the XSLT file. If you decide to take that route you can follow the first steps in this tutorial, which explains how to setup your environment without an XML editor.

Tutorial

1. Open Oxygen and create a new document of type XSLT
2. Copy and paste the XSLT code below:
<?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:@ipaddress:sid','username','password')" />
  <xsl:variable name="streaming" select="sql:disableStreamingMode($movies)" />
  <xsl:variable
   name="queryResults"
   select="sql:query($movies,'SELECT movie, actor FROM movie')" />
  <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>
3. Be sure to make your changes accordingly
4. After pasting your code in the text area click on the XSLT debugger button as shown in the image below:







5.
Click on the Run button



6. VoilĂ ! Now look at the result, and here is what I got from my XSLT:













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