title: T-SQL querying XML column with XPath very slow - how to improve, or alternatives?
body: <p>I have a table that contains a XML data type column. Right now the approach is to use XPath to query values that are within the XML. Unfortunately this method is turning out to be extremely slow.</p>
  
  <p>The table has about 500,000 rows. It is actually a staging table that receives new data every day, so applying XML indexing on the column is not practical - the daily INSERT operation then takes hours to complete. Without indexing, it finishes in about a minute.</p>
  
  <p>Are there any alternatives to query this XML data that would be much faster?</p>