XPath query runs slow when referencing parent node using ../../<node name>

Question

I want to get all the Reading nodes and their values from each session in my xml document as well as obtaining the session ID from the parent node. I am running this on a SQL Server 2008 instance.

My xml setup is:

<Sessions>
<SessionID>99</SessionID>
<Readings>
  <Reading>
    <Point>
      <Lat>-40.411558</Lat>
      <Lng>175.63504</Lng>
    </Point>
    <Heading>54</Heading>
    <Speed>0.1</Speed>
    <Height>0</Height>
    <FlowRate>0.69</FlowRate>
    <AppRate>74</AppRate>
  </Reading>
  ... more readings
</Readings>
<Sessions>

My original attempt (which works) was shown below however this seems extremely slow when I run it. However when I take out the line that add's the SessionID i.e ../../SessionID it seems to perform much faster. It takes a 12sec query down to just 2sec.

        SELECT
            [SessionID] = c.value('(../../SessionID)[1]', 'int'),
            [Heading] = c.value('(Heading)[1]', 'float'),
            [Speed] = c.value('(Speed)[1]', 'float'),
            [Height] = c.value('(Height)[1]', 'float'),
            [FlowRate] = c.value('(FlowRate)[1]', 'float'),
            [AppRate] = c.value('(AppRate)[1]', 'float'),
            [Latitude] = c.value('(Point/Lat)[1]', 'float'),
            [Longtitude] = c.value('(Point/Lng)[1]', 'float')
        FROM
            @XMLData.nodes('/Sessions/Readings/Reading') XMLData(c)

Is there anyway I can do this without the need to reference SessionID using the ../../ notation. I do need the SessionID as this query is being used to insert records into a temporary table:

insert into #MyTempTable
SELECT
            [SessionID] = c.value('(../../SessionID)[1]', 'int'),
            [Heading] = c.value('(Heading)[1]', 'float'),
            [Speed] = c.value('(Speed)[1]', 'float'),
            [Height] = c.value('(Height)[1]', 'float'),
            [FlowRate] = c.value('(FlowRate)[1]', 'float'),
            [AppRate] = c.value('(AppRate)[1]', 'float'),
            [Latitude] = c.value('(Point/Lat)[1]', 'float'),
            [Longtitude] = c.value('(Point/Lng)[1]', 'float')
        FROM
            @XMLData.nodes('/Sessions/Readings/Reading') XMLData(c)

Answer 1

For the first part of avoiding ../../ you can use CROSS APPLY to to provide both data sets.

Also if you would like a faster INSERT and are not worried about logging, the SELECT INTO statement would provide a much faster insert:

SELECT
    s.value('(SessionID)[1]', 'int') SessionID,             
    r.value('(Heading)[1]', 'float') Heading,
    r.value('(Speed)[1]', 'float') Speed,
    r.value('(Height)[1]', 'float') Height,
    r.value('(FlowRate)[1]', 'float') FlowRate,
    r.value('(AppRate)[1]', 'float') AppRate,
    r.value('(Point/Lat)[1]', 'float') Latitude,
    r.value('(Point/Lng)[1]', 'float') Longtitude
INTO #Reading
FROM
    @XMLData.nodes('/Sessions') as S(s)
    CROSS APPLY 
    s.nodes('./Readings/Reading') XMLData(r)