Try either :

1.  <TD><xsl:value-of select="concat(BookName,'&#xa0;')"/></TD>
 or
2. <TD><xsl:value-of select="BookName"/>
             <xsl:if test="not(BookName)">&#xa0;</xsl:if></TD>

Option 1. adds a (non-breaking) space irrespective of whether the element is
missing so you may prefer 2.  I think Oracle always uses the empty element
syntax if the tags have no content. Using a variable set to an empty string does
not solve the problem.

Regards
Nick Browne
Slipstone Ltd

"Sellmer-Brüls, Barbara" wrote:

> Hi,
> How can I persuade the Oracle parser to output <td></td> in case that an XML
> element is sometimes not present?


 XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list