![]() It has NULL values in most of the columns, as shown below. Order BY MiddleName NULL values appear last in ORDER BYīefore we use GROUP BY, let's insert one more record in the table. (Suffix || ' ' || FirstName || ' ' || MiddleName || LastName ) SELECT Suffix, FirstName, MiddleName, LastName, Suffix, If we sort data using this column, it lists the NULL values at the end, as shown below. For example, in our customer table, we have NULLs in the MilddleName column. Therefore, if we use ORDER By and GROUP by clause with NULL value columns, it treats them equally and sorts, group them. SQL considers the NULL values as the UNKNOWN values. SELECTįROM (VALUES (NULL), (NULL), (NULL),(NULL), (NULL)) AS a (values) Īggregating over all NULL values results in an error. You get an error message if we try to use the aggregate function on all NULL values. SQL ignores the NULLs in aggregate functions except for COUNT() and GROUP BY(). Look at the above figure: it calculated values for all aggregated functions. What do you think the expected outcome would be? SELECT Sum(values) AS sumįROM (VALUES (1), (2), (3),(4), (NULL)) AS a (values) Suppose you use aggregate functions such as SUM, AVG, or MIN, MAX for NULL values. We’ll look at them later in this article. There are many SQL functions available to overcome these NULL value issues in string concatenations. Its concatenated string is NULL as well, because SQL cannot validate the string value contains NULL. For example, the person in Row 1 does not have a middle name. Look at the result set - the query returns NULL in the concatenated string if any part of the string has NULL. Setting a string to NULL and then concatenating it returns NULL ![]() (Suffix || ' ' || FirstName || ' ' || MiddleName || LastName ) AS CustomerFullName FROM Customers Suppose you required the customer's full name in a single column, and you concatenate them using the pipe sign(||). NULL also plays an important role in string concatenation. Multiplying a decimal by NULL returns NULL Multiplying an integer by NULL returns NULL SELECT 10.0 * NULL If you try to perform an arithmetic operation, it also returns NULL because SQL cannot determine the correct value for the variable, and it considers an UNKNOWN value. Similarly, suppose you declared a variable but did not initialize its value. Integer, Decimal, and String Operations with NULL By using IS NULL instead of equals you can query for NULL values. If you remove space, it becomes a function ISNULL(). Note: There is a space between IS and NULL. Instead, you refer to the value as IS NULL for this purpose. In the SQL standard, we cannot compare a value to NULL. In the above select statement expression defines “Where the email address equals an UNKNOWN value”. Values that are NULL cannot be queried using = The following query works fine, but it will not give us a row: Select * FROM Customers WHERE Emailaddress=NULL ![]() Now, suppose you want to fetch records for those customers who do not have an email address. ![]() (FirstName, MiddleName, LastName, Suffix, CompanyName, SalesPerson, NULL in the WHERE Clause Let’s insert a few records into this table using the following script. The columns such as CustomerID, FirstName, LastName do not allow NULL values, whereas the Suffix, CompanyName, and SalesPerson columns can store NULL values. For example, look at the following customer's table. To a table structure, we need to define whether the respective column allows NULL or not. Screenshots in this post come from the Arctype SQL Client. In this post we will consider how NULL is used in creating tables, querying, string operations, and functions. Therefore a NULL value in this table represents missing or inadequate information. However, an alternate contact number is not required and therefore has an unknown value. This table has a few mandatory value columns like EmployeeId, Name, and ContactNumber. Suppose you have an employee table containing columns such as EmployeeId, Name, ContactNumber and an alternate contact number. It is not equivalent to empty string or zero. The NULL value is a data type that represents an unknown value. ![]()
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