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Subject: Coalesce, isEmpty and nvl

Message-Id: <E1Bd43P-000535-00@gaul.cornfield.org.uk>
From: simonw@cornfield.org.uk
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 10:28:27 +0100


Hi

I have an application that I am porting from MySQL to Postgres, and have hit a
problem with coalesce.

I assumed that coalesce() works like nvl() and ifnull and will return the 2nd
argument if the first is NULL or Empty String, just like Orcale/SQLServer with nvl()
or MySQL with ifnull().

Is there a simple way to implement this function other creating an nvl() function
with pg/PLSQL.

Finally, how efficient are pg/PLSQL functions at runtime? Are they re-parsed with
every call, or are parsed once only?

Many thanks

Simon

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