oracle - What are Double Quotes in Oracle (XMLElement)?

Question

What type does "Foo" have in the following:

select XMLElement("Foo", 'Bar') from dual

?

Answer 1

It doesn't have a "type" (i.e. it's not a number, date or character string) - it's just the label for the XML node.

The double-quotes stops Oracle from converting the label to uppercase, i.e.:

select XMLElement(Foo, 'Bar') from dual;

<FOO>Bar</FOO>

select XMLElement("Foo", 'Bar') from dual;

<Foo>Bar</Foo>