General information
Category:
Databases,Tables, Views, Indexing and SQL syntax
I agree, for a one-SQL statement, but...
In this case ( a Sql UNION), I am pulling from a template table in the 1st SQL call to get the structure (no nvl() used here), then UNIONing in a second data collection, that does use NVL(vendor, '') to match up to the first SQL. I think in this case, the 1st one is setting the width, so the second sql only needs to supply a string data type (of any length) to fill in the already-established schema from the first SQL. From the 2nd SQL, a shorter string is padded automatically, longer one would get truncated.
That's what I am seeing happen.
>>Actually, it seems to work fine without the padding. I would have thought that would not work, but it does.
>>
>>Well, at least I can say it does work when there is at least one non-null in the testdata group. I should test for all nulls in testdata, and maybe then it would fail.
>>
>
>The width of the field is determined by the first matching record. If the first matching record is a .NULL. value then your field will be set to the width of '' as defined in your: NVL(somefield,'')
>
>
>This is a gotcha that has gotten me.
Previous
Next
Reply
View the map of this thread
View the map of this thread starting from this message only
View all messages of this thread
View all messages of this thread starting from this message only