Another question about Oracle’s Dbms_XmlDom functionality. This time about setting attributes. Here’s the code:

DECLARE
   doc_   dbms_XmlDom.DomDocument := Dbms_XmlDom.newDomDocument;
   nd_    dbms_XmlDom.DomNode;
   tag_   dbms_XmlDom.DomElement;
   data_in_ VARCHAR2(50) := '£';
   out_   VARCHAR2(32000);
BEGIN
   Dbms_XmlDom.setVersion (doc_, '1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes');
   tag_ := Dbms_XmlDom.createElement (
      doc     => doc_,
      tagName => 'coreProperties'
   );
   Dbms_XmlDom.setAttribute(tag_, 'myAttribute', data_in_);
   nd_  := Dbms_XmlDom.appendChild (Dbms_XmlDom.makeNode(doc_), Dbms_XmlDom.makeNode(tag_));

   out_ := Dbms_XmlDom.getXmlType(doc_).getClobVal;
   Dbms_XmlDom.freeDocument (doc_);
   Dbms_Output.Put_Line (out_);
END;

And here’s the output:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<coreProperties myAttribute="£"/>

I need the output to be:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<coreProperties myAttribute="£"/>

In other words, I want to prevent the & in the input data (which gets fed into the attribute’s value) from escaping into & by the function setAttribute(). Can it be done?