Haha! Yeah, Kind of Blue always calms me down.

Thanks for your comments.

In a nutshell, the technique I describe in my article may come close to what you're looking for. Here's the Reader's Digest version of it:


First, create a table-valued UDF in your database, as such:

CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[XML2TableVar] 
(  @XMLString XML) 
RETURNS 
@tPKList TABLE  ( PKValue int) 
AS 
BEGIN 

            INSERT INTO @tPKList 
              SELECT Tbl.Col.value('.','int') 
                  FROM   @XMLString.nodes('//PKValue') Tbl( Col ) 
   RETURN 
END 

This will allow you to pass any XML string and receive a table variable in return.

So you can use it in query analyzer like the following:

DECLARE @XMLString XML 
SET @XMLString ='<Customers> 
                      <Customer> 
                           <PKValue>2</PKValue> 
                           <PKValue>5</PKValue> 
                      </Customer> 
                 </Customers>' 


-- Perform a JOIN using the UDF 

SELECT Customers.* FROM Customers 
                       JOIN [dbo].[XML2TableVar] (@XMLString) CustList 
                                    ON Customers.CustomerPK = CustList.PKValue

So there it is...you just call the UDF in your SELECT statement, and it returns a table variable that you can use in a JOIN.

Pretty re-usable....now, the one requirement is that your selections in the XML must use the column name PKVALUE. If you want to make it variable, you'd have to modify the UDF.

Let me know what you think....again, thanks for your comments, I appreciate them.

Kevin