How to choose returned column name in a SELECT FOR XML query?

Question

MS SQL has a convenient workaround for concatenating a column value from multiple rows into one value:

SELECT col1
 FROM table1
 WHERE col2 = \'x\'
 ORDER by col         


        

Answer 1

For EXPLICIT xml generation - with unions you need to wrap results one more time (As a bonus result as XML):

SELECT 
    CAST(  
        (
            SELECT 
                * 
            FROM (
                SELECT 
                    1 AS Tag
                    ,NULL AS Parent
                    ...
                UNION ALL
                SELECT ...
                FOR XML EXPLICIT
            )
        ) as XML) as [MyName]