[thelist] can i merge columns in an Oracle query?

Luther, Ron Ron.Luther at hp.com
Mon Mar 15 14:35:54 CDT 2010


Judah McAuley noted:

>>Yes, I know, sorry for the confusion. I meant that both Oracle and
>>MSSQL support COALESCE as it is the ANSI-92 standard. 


Hi Judah,

Sorry.  Didn't mean to cause any confusion.  I was only trying to point out that MSSQL (T-SQL) has supported the COALESCE command for a longer period of time than Oracle (PL/SQL).  It used to be one of the differences folks had to remember when working on one and then the other db.

Rudy correctly noted that the command is currently available in the latest versions of both database products.

(Rudy also noted the cool tip that Oracle supports AS for column aliases but not table aliases. ?!?  *I* found that interesting anyway.)

Now if only MX-SQL would support all this fun stuff!

Sigh,
RonL.

* Standards are nice.  But as we've all seen, sometimes it takes a while for 'standards' to get incorporated into vendor product offerings.  And after that it takes even longer for customers to upgrade to the version levels that support the standards.  So, even today, I would bet that it's still possible to get pulled into a consulting gig on a legacy Oracle instance where COALESCE is not an available command.  



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