Comments on: SQL SERVER – SSMS does NOT Print NULL Values

By: Vasan

Vasan — Fri, 10 May 2013 12:14:10 +0000

How about this ?

DECLARE @print NVARCHAR(max)
DECLARE @var1 numeric(10,2),
@var2 numeric(10,2),
@var3 numeric(10,2),
@var4 numeric(10,2)
SET @var1=12500
SET @var2=NULL
SET @var3=500
SELECT @var4=(@var1+@var2+@var3)

SELECT @print= CASE WHEN CAST(@var4 AS VARCHAR(10)) IS NULL THEN ‘NULL’ ELSE CAST(@var4 AS VARCHAR(10)) end

PRINT @print

By: Bryan

Bryan — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 14:27:26 +0000

IsNull can also cause a different problem if you aren’t careful though.

declare @var1 int = NULL
, @var2 varchar(100) = NULL

print ‘@var1=’ + convert(varchar(100), isNull(@var1, ‘NULL’)) –will NOT work, and will throw an exception instead.

but
print ‘@var2=’ + convert(varchar(100), isNull(@var2, ‘NULL’)) –WILL work.(and the convert is unnecessary)

Why? because IsNull() converts the second parameter into the type of the first parameter before returning a value and the character string ‘NULL’ does not convert into an int!

the correct form to safely print @var1 when NULLs are possible would be:

print ‘@var1=’ + isNull(convert(varchar(100), @var1), ‘NULL’)

By: Aaron

Aaron — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 09:17:37 +0000

For SQL Server, ISNULL will work. However, find me an ISNULL in Oracle and you will see the solution I provide is better for this particular problem.

Here is an article which extensively examines this question.

http://www.mssqltips.com/sqlservertip/2689/deciding-between-coalesce-and-isnull-in-sql-server/

By: Shuaib

Shuaib — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 02:26:16 +0000

Interesting

By: Ali Kolahdoozan

Ali Kolahdoozan — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 00:53:00 +0000

ISNULL Dear.Isnull will solve the problem.

By: Aaron

Aaron — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 17:18:18 +0000

You would get a printed result if you were to do the following:

SELECT @var4=(coalesce(@var1, 0)+coalesce(@var2, 0)+coalesce(@var3, 0))

By: Shorty

Shorty — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 14:32:54 +0000

Good hint, thanks !
Had this problem myself some time ago when i was concatenating a print string with certain values and it was driving me nuts that there was no reply from SSMS :) – Gonna use ‘Select’ from now on.

By: resender

resender — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 14:31:19 +0000

Interesting so having a null value in the mathematics changes the outcome to null, not sure if its correct logic but interesting non the less