How can I join an XML column back onto the record it originates from?

Question

I have a table "Blah" with a PK column BlahID and an XML column BlahItems in a database on SQL Server 2005.

This table has records as follows...

BlahID BlahItems
------ ------------------------------------------------------
1      <root><item name="Fred" /><item name="Wilma" /></root>
2      <root><item name="Lisa" /><item name="Bart" /></root>

How can I query that table to produce the following....

BlahID BlahItem
------ --------
1      Fred
1      Wilma
2      Lisa
2      Bart

The closest I've managed to get is on a per record FUNCTION that does something along the lines of the following...

CREATE FUNCTION dbo.Blahs(@id int)
RETURNS @list TABLE (BlahID int, BlahItem nvarchar(max))
BEGIN
    DECLARE @xml AS xml
    SELECT @xml = BlahItems FROM dbo.Blah AS b WHERE b.BlahID = @id

    INSERT INTO @list
    SELECT @id, tbl.col.value('@name','nvarchar(max)')
    FROM @xml.nodes('/root/item') tbl(col)
    RETURN
END

SELECT * FROM dbo.Blahs(1)

BlahID BlahItem
------ --------
1      Fred
1      Wilma

My ultimate goal is to create a VIEW of the "expanded" data and then query against the view.

Answer 1

You can try this query:

SELECT BlahID, XmlItems.BlahItem.value('@name', 'nvarchar(100)') AS BlahItem
FROM Blah CROSS APPLY BlahItems.nodes('/root/item') AS XmlItems(BlahItem)

For more info check this three-part article by Alex Homer.