I have table, in which a column has empty fields.when i try to run simple query like below it is not
returning the data.
select * from table1 where "colunm1" = ''
But below two queries returns data
1,
select * from table1
where coalesce("colunm1", '') = ''
2,
select * from table1
where "colunm1" is null
Can someone tell me the reason?
TIA
You have describe the behavior of a column that is NULL. NULL is not the same as an empty string.
It fails any equality comparison. However, you can use is null or (less preferentially) coalesce().
The only database that treats an empty string like a NULL value, is Oracle.
Logically, for a DBMS, that would be wrong.
Relational DBMSs are all about :
set theory
Boolean algebra
A NULL value is a value that we don't know. A string literal of '' is a string whose value we know. It is a string with no characters, with a length of 0. We don't know of a NULL as a string how long it is, how many and, if any, which, characters it contains.
So it is only logical that:
the comparison '' = '' will evaluate to TRUE
the comparison NULL = NULL will evaluate to FALSE , as any comparison with a NULL value will evaluate to FALSE.
And functions like COALESCE() or NVL(), IFNULL(), ISNULL() will return the first parameter if it does not contain a NULL value. That is consistent.
Except in Oracle
Related
I am currently learning SQL utilizing Codecademy and am curious if there is a difference between using "IS" or "=".
In the current lesson, I wrote this code:
SELECT *
FROM nomnom
WHERE neighborhood IS 'Midtown'
OR neighborhood IS 'Downtown'
OR neighborhood IS 'Chinatown';
Which ran perfectly fine. I always like to look at the answer after to see if there was something I did wrong or could improve on. The answer had this code:
SELECT *
FROM nomnom
WHERE neighborhood = 'Midtown'
OR neighborhood = 'Downtown'
OR neighborhood = 'Chinatown';
Do IS and = function the same?
All that you want to know you can find it here:
The IS and IS NOT operators work like = and != except when one or both
of the operands are NULL. In this case, if both operands are NULL,
then the IS operator evaluates to 1 (true) and the IS NOT operator
evaluates to 0 (false). If one operand is NULL and the other is not,
then the IS operator evaluates to 0 (false) and the IS NOT operator is
1 (true). It is not possible for an IS or IS NOT expression to
evaluate to NULL. Operators IS and IS NOT have the same precedence as
=.
taken from: SQL As Understood By SQLite.
The important part is: ...except when one or both of the operands are NULL... because when using = or != (<>) and 1 (or both) of the operands is NULL then the result is also NULL and this is the difference to IS and IS NOT.
They work the same but "IS" is a keyword in MySQL and is generally used while comparing NULL values. While comparing NULL values "=" does not work.
SELECT * FROM nomnom WHERE neighborhood IS NULL
The above statement would run perfectly fine but
SELECT * FROM nomnom WHERE neighborhood = NULL
would result in an error.
They are the same for these cases, but further down the line you will discover one nifty little value called NULL.
NULL is a pain because... it doesn't exist.
0 = NULL returns FALSE;
Date <> [Column] will not return lines with NULL, only those with a value that is different.
Hell, even NULL = NULL returns false. And NULL <> NULL also returns false. That is why "IS" exists. Because NULL IS NULL will return true.
So as a general rule, use = for values.
Keep "IS" for null.
[Column] IS NULL
or
[Column] IS NOT NULL
And remember to always check if your column is nullable that you need to plan for null values in your WHERE or ON clauses.
I have following table:
And following simple query:
SELECT * FROM dbo.Calendars WHERE calname NOT IN(NULL)
My question is why always NOT IN(NULL) return nothing?
PS:No matter what is your table,if you add NOT IN(NULL) to any column's condition,result is nothing.
Thank you in advance :)
Because value equals NULL is not defined, and will never evaluate to True.
Check This post on bad practices. Don't use IN and NULL, use EXISTS to test for at least one row where something exists.
NULL is treated differently to other values in most databases. For instance, this predicate will never be true:
WHERE foo = NULL
whereas this predicate is true if the value of foo is indeed NULL:
WHERE foo IS NULL
To your problem, if you only wish to check if calname is not null, use the following predicate:
WHERE calname IS NOT NULL
If on the other hand you have a set of values, of which NULL is one of those values (say [1,2,3,4,NULL]), and you still want to use the NOT IN syntax, you have to do it like this:
WHERE calname IS NOT NULL AND calname NOT IN(1, 2, 3, 4)
EDIT: A further way of doing this, if you are constrained to use the NOT IN syntax is to COALESCE the column calname into a value that you definitely know is not stored in that column. For instance, if calname can only take positive integer values, then we can do this instead:
WHERE COALESCE(calname, -1) NOT IN (-1)
Your query evaluates to calname <> null , which results in UNKNOWN.
Change your query to this ,
SELECT * FROM dbo.Calendars WHERE calname IS NOT NULL;
I am trying to generate a hive query which will take multiple numeric column names and check whether it is has numeric values. If the column has numeric values then the output should be (column name,true) else if the field has NULL or some string value the output should be (column name,false)
SELECT distinct (test_nr1,test_nr2) FROM test.abc WHERE (test_nr1,test_nr2) not like '%[^0-9]%';
SELECT distinct test_nr1,test_nr2 from test.abc limit 2;
test_nr1 test_nr2
NULL 81432269
NULL 88868060
the desired output should be :
test_nr1 false
test_nr2 true
Since test_nr1 is a decimal field and it has NULL values, it should output false.
Appreciate valuable suggestions.
You can use cast function. It returns NULL when the value can not not be cast to numeric.
For example:
select case when cast('23ccc' as double) is null then false else true end as IsNumber;
You're trying to use character class pattern matching syntax here, and it doesn't work in every SQL implementation IIRC, however, regexp matching works in most, if not all, SQL implementations.
Considering you're using hive, this should do it:
SELECT ('test_nr1', test_nr1 RLIKE '\d'), ('test_nr2', test_nr2 RLIKE '\d') FROM test.abc;
You should remember that regexp matching is very slow in SQL though.
I've a scenrio which process many data in Oracle database. In some cases, the variable Sec_email will contain many values and in some cases Sec_email will contain null or ' '.
so can please any one tell me how to write a query for this?
I tried with
(C.SECONDARY_EMAIL IN ('?,?') OR '' = '' )
where C is the Client table.
When I use this i get the count as 0.
You can perform a not null check before the IN comparison like
Sec_email is not null and C.SECONDARY_EMAIL IN (...
One obvious problem is that Oracle (by default) treats empty strings as NULL. So: '' = '' is the same as NULL = NULL, which is never true.
Arrgh.
In any case, you are probably constructing the query, so use is null instead:
(C.SECONDARY_EMAIL IN ('?,?') OR '' IS NULL
I think the real problem, though, is the first comparison. The IN list has one element with a constant, not two (but perhaps that is your intention). If you want to put a variable number of values for comparison, one method uses regular expressions. For instance:
C.SECONDARY_EMAIL REGEXP_LIKE '^val1|val2|val3$' or '' IS NULL
If you would like to get a list of values when some of them is null you should use:
("some other conditions" OR C.SECONDARY_EMAIL IS NULL)
The question is if it is not null and not ' ' value what you are expecting, if it should be some king of
pattern you should use regular expression:
regexp_like(C.SECONDARY_EMAIL, '^(.+?[,]+?)+$')
Also, if you have a few conditions in where clause use should use brackets to group you conditions null check and another one.
All conditions i this case will be divided by OR.
(C.SECONDARY_EMAIL IS NULL OR regexp_like(C.SECONDARY_EMAIL, '^(.+?[,]+?)+$'))
or
(C.SECONDARY_EMAIL IS NULL OR regexp_like(C.SECONDARY_EMAIL, '^(.+?[,]+?)+$')
OR C.SECONDARY_EMAIL = ' ')
In a table containing five records where the Toppings value is "Chocolate", two of them have the value "Yes" in the MaraschinoCherry column, the other three contain nothing in that column (not "No" - nothing/blank).
This query works fine:
select definition from desserts
where (Toppings = 'Chocolate') and
(MaraschinoCherry <> 'Yes')
order by id
...returning the expected three records; but this one returns nothing at all, rather than the two records I expect:
select definition from desserts
where (Toppings = 'Chocolate') and
(MaraschinoCherry = 'Yes')
order by id
???
The answer to your question is simple. Any comparison to a NULL value, with two exceptions, produces NULL as the result. So,
MaraschinoCherry = 'Yes'
and
MaraschinoCherry <> 'Yes'
Both return NULL when MaraschinoCherry has a NULL value. NULL comparisons are treated the same as FALSE.
The two exceptions are: IS NULL and IS NOT NULL. Note that "= NULL" always returns NULL, which is interpreted as FALSE.
The normal way to fix this is by using COALESCE:
COALESCE(MaraschinoCherry, 'NO') = 'Yes'
(The function ISNULL() is kind of equivalent, but COALESCE allows more arguments and is standard SQL.)
There are other ways you can fix this, such as by specifying a default value for the column when you define the table, by adding an explicit comparison to NULL, by declaring the column to be "NOT NULL", or in some databases by overriding the behavior of NULLs in comparisons to violate the SQL standards (HIGHLY NOT RECOMMENDED!).