As said in the “rule of numb” post, test your statement before you build an XMLIndex (structured or unstructured) on you column or table XML store. The database will check on the syntax you will use but NOT on the outcome. So if you statement doesn’t have the proper result set or is even empty, than the content table(s) or path table will be indexing the wrong element values or even a null data set. Be aware that XML in Oracle is case-sensitive and critical on calling a namespace reference if one if demanded by the W3C rules.
The following example will build a single structured XMLIndex on a binary xml column.