HTML Mail generation through SQL server

[rhishi20]

Dear Friends , I am just going through SQL Stored Procedure which is previously created. it contains mail Generation in HTML through SQL. in following code i am not able to understand use of number (1) & (2) please explain me. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------SET @tableHTML = N'<H>MRP Indent Details</H>' + N'<table border="1">' + N'<tr><th>Indent Code</th><th>Indent Date</th><th>indent Type</th>' + N'<th>Approved BY</th><th>Cost center</th><th>No Of Items</th><th>Approximate Rate</th></tr>'+ CAST ((select td=a.Indentcd,' ', (1) ' ' td=a.IndentDt,'', td=a.indenttype,' ', td=a.ApprovedBy,' ', td=a.ccncd,' ', "td/@align" = 'right',td=a.Itemcnt,' ', "td/@align" = 'right',td=a.mthwtavgrate,' ' from TmpMRPMail a FOR XML PATH('tr'), TYPE ) AS NVARCHAR(MAX)) + N'</table>' ; (2) XML Path -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[justsomeguy]

Both of those lines are part of the same cast statement, is cast what you don't understand?

[rhishi20]

I am not understanding why there are quotes ' ' after column name and function of xml path.

[justsomeguy]

I'm not sure, but maybe they are selecting blank values or spaces to match a certain column structure or something similar.