How do you read XML column in SQL Server 2008?

Question

I have never used XML in SQL Server 2008, I need to extract a list of customers into a variable table how do you do it?

Given that I have a column called CustomerList in a Sales table that looks like something like below how do I extract the list of customers in sql?

<ArrayOfCustomers xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"        
                  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
   <Customer>
       <ItemId>1</ItemId>
       <Value>Mr Smith</Value>
   </Customer>
   <Customer>
      <ItemId>2</ItemId>
      <Value>Mr Bloggs</Value>
   </Customer>
</ArrayOfCustomers>

Answer 1

Try something like this:

SELECT
   Cust.value('(ItemId)[1]', 'int') AS 'ItemID',
   Cust.value('(Value)[1]', 'Varchar(50)') AS 'Customer Name'
FROM
   dbo.Sales.CustomerList.nodes('/ArrayOfCustomers/Customer') AS AOC(Cust)

That should give you an output something like this:

ItemID  Customer Name
   1         Mr Smith
   2         Mr Bloggs