Question

I have a stored procedure with a parameter name which I want to use in a where clause to match the value of a column i.e. something like

where col1 = name

Now of course this fails to match null to null because of the way null works. Do I need to do

where ((name is null and col1 is null) or col1 = name)

in situations like this or is there a more concise way of doing it?

Answer 1

You can use decode function in the following fashion:

where decode(col1, name, 0) is not null

Cite from SQL reference:

In a DECODE function, Oracle considers
two nulls to be equivalent.