Database Software

Hi everyone

I'm using ORACLE 11g and looking to shred XML into a test table called employees. I was hoping I'd be able to get the datatypes from the existing employees table instead of specifying them in the columns clause. Is this possible?

Here is an example of what I'm trying to do. But, I get an error: PL/SQL: ORA-00907: missing right parenthesis on the line with starting with columns.

    insert into EMPLOYEES
     select *
       from xmltable(
       '/employees/employee'
        passing EMP_XML

        columns FIRST_NAME EMPLOYEES.FIRST_NAME%TYPE path 'first_name',
                LAST_NAME  EMPLOYEES.LAST_NAME%TYPE  path 'last_name',
                GENDER     EMPLOYEES.GENDER%TYPE     path 'gender',
                AGE        EMPLOYEES.AGE%TYPE        path 'age'
        );

Error Details

        columns FIRST_NAME EMPLOYEES.FIRST_NAME%TYPE path 'first_name',
                            *          

ERROR at line 16:
ORA-06550: line 16, column 42:
PL/SQL: ORA-00907: missing right parenthesis
ORA-06550: line 11, column 5:
PL/SQL: SQL Statement ignored

Thanks.