Came across this at work today when a sum was returning null, it was presumed zero would be so there wasn't a check in place.

My first thought was to use NZ but that's Access not SQL-Server, there is IsNull() but COALESCE() was used in the end.

I'd never come across this so thought I'd share.


COALESCE()
Returns the first nonnull expression among its arguments.
COALESCE ( expression [ ,...n ] )
Returns the data type of expression with the highest data type precedence. If all expressions are nonnullable, the result is typed as nonnullable.

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Reply from Richard Rost:

Interesting. Never had a need for that function before. Thanks for sharing.