Question

I’m not a SQL DBA and I’m having an issue. We run MS SQL 2008 server and just upgraded it from MS SQL 2000. I’m trying to run a query created for the DB in MS SQL 2000 and use the results for our mailing list.

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The query is:

SELECT DISTINCT Title, FirstName, MiddleInitial, LastName, Suffix, 
CompanyName, BAddress, BAddress2, BCity, BState, BZip
FROM MailingExportView
WHERE     AdvanceMailing = 0 
ORDER BY BZip, LastName

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Which gives us back something similar to:

Title   FirstName   MiddleInitial   LastName    Suffix  CompanyName BAddress    BAddress2   BCity   BState  BZip
Mr. Bob NULL    Smith   NULL    NULL    12345 Main , Anytown    State, NULL NULL

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I’d like to not get the NULL. If the field is null ideally I’d like it to come back blank.

I’ve read about Null Processing from other sites and here;

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms170707.aspx

I’ve tried rearranging this so that the ISNULL will put the nulls in a different table:

How to replace blank (null ) values with 0 for all records?

http://bytes.com/topic/sql-server/answers/888443-convert-null-blank-if-not-null-remove-commas-string

http://www.w3schools.com/sql/sql_isnull.asp

I’m at a loss here. Can someone help me out?

Answer 1

wrap COALESCE around columns where you want blanks

COALESCE(MiddleInitial,'') AS MiddleInitial   

repeat for the other columns