Apologies if this has been asked before but I can't seem to find a relevant answer. It looks like it should be rather simple.
I'm looking at a store procedure (in Sql Server 2008) that includes a select statement similar to the following:
SELECT id, name, null revisedDate
FROM MyTable
What does 'null' mean when preceding the column 'revisedDate'? Does this mean make the returned column values null regardless? I thought it might be a way of giving it a default value of null, but then surely if there's no value then it would return null anyway.
It simply means that you are including a hardcoded NULL value in your result set. Further revisedDate is the name given to that column. For every row in the result set, this column will show NULL.
Assuming TSQL..
Im pretty sure that that will just return a column of nulls under the heading revisedDate. It wont bring back values form any column as in SQL syntax this is the equivelent of null as revisedDate
Hth
O
Related
This question already has answers here:
postgresql NOT ILIKE clause does not include null string values
(2 answers)
Closed 7 months ago.
select * from test;
select * from test where name not in ('amtf');
Why?
As others have said, the problem here is, that you're comparing against a null value, so it returns nothing, because it considers it as false, and I'll go even further that even if you say where name <> 'admf' it wont work, and even if you add more rows it will ignore the null row, and it's not just in PostgreSQL, it doesn't work in SQL-Server or MySQL either.
As you can see in these db<>fiddles SQL-Server, MySQL, and PostgreSQL.
And the reason why it doesn't work is, because you're saying name should not equal a specific value. First name needs to be a value it should not be equal to a value, but when name is null it doesn't have a value, and even more for a side note null itself is not equal null.
The way to solve it is to convert it to a empty string by using COALESCE(name,'') or in SQL-Server you can also use isnull(name,''), and then compare it, or you can add or name is null which will return you all rows, including null, where name <> 'some value'.
Well the condition is right and the response for that as soo .
select * from test where name not in ('amtf');
your query is saying : give me all the records that the name Column is not in ('amtf').
you have 2 column's on is amtf and the other is null.
amtf will no be brought because of the condition and the other column is null -> no name set
Upon searching ways to replace NULL values in my table with 0 on Stack Overflow, it appears that many threads I've found point to using the COALESCE function. E.g. postgresql return 0 if returned value is null
I understand that the COALESCE function "replaces" null values for your specific query; however, the table itself remains untouched. That is, if you queried the table again in a separate query without COALESCE, null values would still exist.
My question is, is there a way for me to replace NULL values permanently in my table with a specified value (like 0) so I don't have to COALESCE in every query? And as an extension to my question, is it considered bad practice to modify the original table instead of doing manipulations in queries?
You can just do an UPDATE:
UPDATE table SET col1 = 0 WHERE col1 IS NULL;
This should effectively update all matching records on your table
I understand you got the answer but you can also use in your further query nvl function. You can replace at the runtime the NULL values with 0 just to be sure your query is working as expected.
SELECT
id
,nvl(col1, 0)
FROM
...
It's not updating in the table but you are sure that all NULL values are displayed as 0 like you want. Maybe you forget to update.
select field from table where field = 'value'
select field from table where field in ('value')
The reason I'm asking is that the second version allow me to use the same syntax for null values, while in the first version I need to change the condition to 'where field is null'...
When you are comparing a field to a null like field_name=NULL you are comparing to a known data type from a field say varchar to not only an unknown value but also an unknown data type as well, that is, for NULL values. When comparison like field_name=NULL again implies therefore a checking of data type for both and thus the two could not be compared even if the value of the field is actually NULL thus it will always result to false. However, using the IS NULL you are only comparing for the value itself without the implied comparison for data type thus it could result either to false or true depending on the actual value of the field.
See reference here regarding the issue of NULL in computer science and here in relation to the similarity to your question.
Now, for the IN clause (i.e. IN(NULL)) I don't know what RDBMS you are using because when I tried it with MS SQL and MySQL it results to nothing.
See MS SQL example and MySQL example.
There is no difference in your example. The second, slightly longer, query is not usually used for a single value, it is usally seen for multiple values, such as
select field from table where field in ('value1', 'value2')
yes there is difference in both this queries. In first statment you can insert only 1 value in where clause "where field = 'value'" but in second statement in where field you can insert many values using IN clause "where field in (value1,value2..)"
Examples:
1) select field from table where field ='value1';
2) select field from table where field in ('value1', 'value2')
To check null values
SELECT field
FROM tbl_name
WHERE
(field IN ('value1', 'value2', 'value3') OR field IS NULL)
I understand that AS is used to create an alias. Therefore, it makes sense to have one long name aliased as a shorter one. However, I am seeing a SQL query NULL as ColumnName
What does this imply?
SELECT *, NULL as aColumn
Aliasing can be used in a number of ways, not just to shorten a long column name.
In this case, your example means you're returning a column that always contains NULL, and it's alias/column name is aColumn.
Aliasing can also be used when you're using computed values, such as Column1 + Column2 AS Column3.
When unioning or joining datasets using a 'Null AS [ColumnA] is a quick way to make sure create a complete dataset that can then be updated later and a new column does not need to be created in any of the source tables.
In the statement result we have a column that has all NULL values. We can refer to that column using alias.
In your case the query selects all records from table, and each result record has additional column containing only NULL values. If we want to refer to this result set and to additional column in other place in the future, we should use alias.
It means that "aColumn" has only Null values. This column could be updated with actual values later but it's an empty one when selected.
---I'm not sure if you know about SSIS, but this mechanism is useful with SSIS to add variable value to the "empty" column.
When using SELECT you can pass a value to the column directly.
So something like :
SELECT ID, Name, 'None' AS Hobbies, 0 AS NumberOfPets, NULL AS Picture, '' AS Adress
Is valid.
It can be used to format nicely a query output when using UNION/UNION ALL.
Query result can have a new column that has all NULL values. In SQL Server we can do it like this
SELECT *, CAST(NULL AS <data-type>) AS as aColumn
e.g.
SELECT *, CAST(NULL AS BIGINT) AS as aColumn
How about without using the the as
SELECT ID
, Name
, 'None' AS Hobbies
, 0 AS NumberOfPets
, NULL Picture
Usually adding NULL as [Column] name at the end of a select all is used when inserting into another table a calculated column based on the table you have just selected.
UPDATE #TempTable SET aColumn = Column1 + Column2 WHERE ...
Then exporting or saving the results to another table.
imagine there are 50 columns. I dont wan't any row that includes a null value. Are there any tricky way?
SQL 2005 server
Sorry, not really. All 50 columns have to be checked in one form or another.
Column1 IS NOT NULL AND ... AND Column50 IS NOT NULL
Of course, under these conditions why not disallow NULLs in the first place by having NOT NULL in the table definition
If it's SQL Server 2005+ you can do something like:
SELECT fields
FROM MyTable
WHERE stuff
EXCEPT -- This excludes the below results
SELECT fields
FROM MyTable
WHERE (Col1 + Col2 + Col3....) IS NULL
Adding a null to a value results in a null, so the sum of all your columns will be NULL.
This may need to change based on your data types, but adding NULL to either a char/varchar or a number will result in another NULL.
If you are looking at the values not being null, you can do this in the select statement.
SELECT ISNULL(firstname,''), ISNULL(lastname,'') FROM TABLE WHERE SOMETHING=1
This will replace nulls with string blanks. If you want another value use: ISNULL(firstname,'empty') for example. You can use anything where the word empty is.
I prefer this query
select *
from table
where column1>''
and column2>''
and (column3>'' or column3<'')
Allows sql server to use an index seek if the proper index/es exist. you would have to do the syntext for column 3 for any numeric values that could be negative.