xmltype column - how do I get contents?

From: ken quirici <ken.quirici_at_excite.com>
Date: Thu, 01 Nov 2007 08:29:01 -0700
Message-ID: <1193930941.306394.69910@d55g2000hsg.googlegroups.com>

I'm writing a trigger that compares an :old vs. a :new value for a column that is
identified as XMLtype. When I look at the 'create' script that Toad generates
for the table containing this column, there's no storage info - e.g. that it's stored
as a LOB.

Since I'm starting off w/o knowing the contents of the column I can't supply
a XMLpath string to extractvalue for example. I tried

select
...

extractvalue(<columnname>,'')
...

hoping it would interpret that as meaning 'give me everything', but it just
returned nulls.

I tried the dbms_lob.substr(<columnname>,100,1) but it returned the error 'wrong number or type of arguments in call to substr'.

So how can I get the full contents of the column w/o knowing the contents
of the column, if you follow my meaning. Received on Thu Nov 01 2007 - 10:29:01 CDT