mikael,
Learnt something new today, thanks
I tried with the below solution to get the value from item code
DECLARE @XML as xml='
<root>
<item>1987</item>
<item>1654</item>
<item>1321</item>
</root>';
select @XML.value('/root[1]', 'nvarchar(15)') -- this is returning value as '198716541321'
select @XML.value('/root[1]', 'int') -- this is throwing error