XML Syntax - READ Statement
The READ statement in XML syntax reads an XML document from an I/O
stream or retrieves an XML element from the in-memory representation of an XML
document.
Format

Syntax Rules:
- File-name-1 is the filename as declared in the SELECT statement
as ORGANIZATION IS XML.
- Data-name-1 can be qualified, and references a data item whose
declaration includes an IDENTIFIED BY clause and is included in the XD record
declarations for file-name-1.
General Rules:
- The READ statement without NEXT KEY specified reads an XML
document and creates an internal tree-based representation of that document. In
addition, it populates the appropriate record definition from the XD with as
much data as possible, based on the record elements and occurrence limitations
of the associated XML tags. The populated elements are associated with their
in-memory counterparts to allow DELETE, REWRITE, and WRITE to modify the
internal representation.
- READ NEXT finds the associated internal counterpart of the
indicated key and either populates the key and all subordinate items with the
next occurrence of that internal counterpart, or returns end-of-file if there
is no next occurrence.
- No stream I/O is actually performed by the READ NEXT KEY IS
statement.
- The READ statement cannot read PROCESSING-INSTRUCTIONs that are
outside the body of the XML record. If you need this flexibility, use the XML
PARSE verb.