What is the Oracle equivalent of SQL Server's IsNull() function?

sql-server oracle tsql plsql
Goran picture Goran · Aug 19, 2010 · Viewed 240.9k times · Source

In SQL Server we can type IsNull() to determine if a field is null. Is there an equivalent function in PL/SQL?

Answer

Shannon Severance picture Shannon Severance · Aug 19, 2010

coalesce is supported in both Oracle and SQL Server and serves essentially the same function as nvl and isnull. (There are some important differences, coalesce can take an arbitrary number of arguments, and returns the first non-null one. The return type for isnull matches the type of the first argument, that is not true for coalesce, at least on SQL Server.)

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