SO SORRY, FOUND THE PROBLEM!!!!!!
I found out that it was the ANSI_NULL setting after all. In the database it was set to false, but in my odbc driver it was set to true.

>SELECT company.name + person.name as desc
>FROM employees
>LEFT OUTER JOIN company ON employees.compid = company.id
>LEFT OUTER JOIN person ON employees.persid = person.id
>
>In SQL Server (query analyzer) name will allways be filled as long as one of the two joins succeed.
>In VFP (SPT) name will only be filled if both joins succeed, otherwise name is NULL. (Regardless of ANSI_NULL setting)
>
>I know that String+NULL = NULL in VFP but not in SQL Server!
>
>Even if i modify the statement to the following name will be null in VFP:
>SELECT CASE employees.compid WHEN NULL THEN '' ELSE company.name END + CASE employees.persid WHEN NULL THEN '' ELSE person.name as name END AS desc
>FROM employees
>LEFT OUTER JOIN company ON employees.compid = company.id
>LEFT OUTER JOIN person ON employees.persid = person.id
>
>An interesting point is that when i say ... CASE 1 WHEN 1 THEN '*' ELSE .... I do get the asterix but when i say ... CASE NULL WHEN NULL THEN '*' i don't.
>
>Does anybody know what is happening here?
>Thanks in advance,
>Marco.