Changing a null string to an empty string in select statment
sql-server
Solution
Check out ISNULL() in the SQL Server Books Online.
Syntax:
ISNULL ( check_expression , replacement_value )
Example:
Select ISNULL(myfield1,'') from mytable1
Problem
I have a SQL Server 2005 table that has a string column in which empty values are sometimes stored as `NULL` and other times as an empty string. I am doing a `SELECT DISTINCT` on this column and I am getting all the distinct values + NULL + empty string. But what I would like is to check if the value is NULL and return an empty string instead. So the result set would be all the distinct values + empty string (if any values were null or an empty string). But how can I do this in a SELECT statement?