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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-26T11:15:24+00:00

When modifying data in a SQL Server database you can use either System.DBNull.Value or

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When modifying data in a SQL Server database you can use either System.DBNull.Value or null to represent a NULL value. Both of these will work and will set the proper value to NULL.

My question is – which of these is preferred, and why? Are there certain cases where one should be used in place of the other?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    From System.DBNull.Value != null, and by testing this code:

    var result = (System.DBNull.Value == null); // this is always false

    We can see that the CLR doesn’t treat them the same way. When retrieving data from a database we need to check for DBNull.Value and not a null reference.

    Although it doesn’t matter which we use to INSERT or UPDATE data, I would tend to stick with DBNull.Value for consistency through data access code.

    There are a variety of other opinions in the question C# Database Access: DBNull vs null

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