T-SQL stored procedure that accepts multiple Id values

Question

Is there a graceful way to handle passing a list of ids as a parameter to a stored procedure?

For instance, I want departments 1, 2, 5, 7, 20 returned by my stored

Answer 1

You could use XML.

E.g.

declare @xmlstring as  varchar(100) 
set @xmlstring = '-1' 

declare @docid int 

exec sp_xml_preparedocument @docid output, @xmlstring

select  [id],parentid,nodetype,localname,[text]
from    openxml(@docid, '/args', 1) 

The command sp_xml_preparedocument is built in.

This would produce the output:

id  parentid    nodetype    localname   text
0   NULL        1           args        NULL
2   0           1           arg         NULL
3   2           2           value       NULL
5   3           3           #text       42
4   0           1           arg2        NULL
6   4           3           #text       -1

which has all (more?) of what you you need.