12/24/2016 SQL Server Interview Questions: What is the use of COALESCE in SQL Server

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this site using g+1 button What is the use of COALESCE in SQL Server
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Let us understand the use of COALESCE with the help of an example.
 

In this example, the Candidate table is shown to include three columns with
information about a Candidate: 
1. Candidate_id
2. PrimaryEmail
3. SecondaryEmail
 

COALESCE in the SELECT statement below, selects the PrimaryEmail if it is
not null. If the PrimaryEmail is null then SecondaryEmail will be selected. If both
PrimaryEmail and SecondaryEmail is present then only PrimaryEmail is
selected. So, COALESCE returns the first nonnull column among the list of
columns passed. If both PrimaryEmail and SecondaryEmail is NULL,
COALESCE returns NULL.

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COALESCE can also be used in joins as shown in the example below. If the
Explain Inner Join with an example Candidate table has a non null value in the Email column, then the value is
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12/24/2016 SQL Server Interview Questions: What is the use of COALESCE in SQL Server

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9 comments:

Anonymous August 22, 2011 at 10:45 PM

Thanks venkat! this is the thing which i came across for the first
time now i will start make use of it in real time scenarios
Reply

Anonymous August 31, 2011 at 6:44 PM

yup realy great thanks from my side vijay raj gupta
Reply

kaku September 26, 2011 at 3:42 AM

but the problem is that it also displays null columns in that
table if some of the columns in having both primary and sec is
null.....
Reply

Harinath naidu March 31, 2013 at 8:51 PM

The best website ever for the concepts to understand in a solid
way.... Thank you Venkat.
Reply
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12/24/2016 SQL Server Interview Questions: What is the use of COALESCE in SQL Server

Reply

gjk October 20, 2013 at 9:59 AM

COALESCE can also be used to concatenate multiple rows as a
single comma separated row.

declare @sample varchar(50)

select @sample = @sample + COALESCE(@sample, ',') + colname
from tablename
Reply

umairumair razzaq January 6, 2014 at 6:27 AM

Thanks
This way make easy in practice
Reply

Anonymous April 27, 2014 at 8:43 PM

COALESCE can also be used to concatenate multiple rows as a
single comma separated row use bellow query(SLIGHT MODIFIED
ABOVE QUERY)

DECLARE @Names VARCHAR(MAX)

SELECT @Names = COALESCE(@Names + ', ','') + NAME FROM
EMPLOYEE
SELECT @Names
Reply

Anonymous December 3, 2014 at 4:47 AM

Thanks Venkat..I have never use COALESCE as I was not aware
of it. but now I came across it through you article.
Reply

Dipali February 19, 2016 at 10:06 AM

Awesome explanation...toooooo gooooood..
Reply

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