Warning: Null value is eliminated by an aggregate or other SET operation in Aqua Data Studio

Question

I have a problem when data is null and the warning has appear when the result is display. How to solve this problem?. How to change the null data to 0 when no data in the table?.

This is my code:-

SELECT DISTINCT c.username             AS assigner_officer,
                d.description          AS ticketcategory,
                (SELECT Count(closed)
                 FROM   ticket
                 WHERE  assigned_to = c.user_id
                        AND closed IS NOT NULL
                 GROUP  BY assigned_to)closedcases,
                (SELECT Count(closed)
                 FROM   ticket
                 WHERE  assigned_to = c.user_id
                        AND closed IS NULL
                 GROUP  BY assigned_to)opencases
FROM   ticket a
       JOIN ticketlog b
         ON a.ticketid = b.ticketid
       JOIN access c
         ON a.assigned_to = c.user_id
       JOIN ticket_category d
         ON a.cat_code = d.id
       JOIN lookup_department e
         ON a.department_code = e.code 

The result appear like this:-

 Warnings: ---> 
   W (1): Warning: Null value is eliminated by an aggregate or other SET operation.
          <--- 
 assigner_officer     ticketcategory     closedcases     opencases    
 -------------------  -----------------  --------------  ------------ 
 abdulhafiz           Enquiry            (null)          0            
 affan                Enquiry            12              (null)       
 amirul               Enquiry            1               (null)       
 azrul_fahmi          Enquiry            45              0            
 Azwani               Enquiry            (null)          0            
 chai                 Enquiry            4               (null)       
 dalinawati           Enquiry            1               0            
 Emmy                 Complaints         (null)          0            
 Fadhlia              Enquiry            38              0            
 fairulhalif          Others             1               (null)       
 farikh               Enquiry            (null)          0            
 ismailh              Enquiry            28              0            
 izzahanna            Enquiry            (null)          0            
 Kamsuzilawati        Enquiry            1               (null)     

Answer 1

You would mostly be using COUNT to summarize over a UID. Therefore

COUNT([uid]) will produce the warning:

Warning: Null value is eliminated by an aggregate or other SET operation.

whilst being used with a left join, where the counted object does not exist.

Using COUNT(*) in this case would also render incorrect results, as you would then be counting the total number of results (ie parents) that exist.

Using COUNT([uid]) IS a valid way of counting, and the warning is nothing more than a warning. However if you are concerned, and you want to get a true count of uids in this case then you could use:

SUM(CASE WHEN [uid] IS NULL THEN 0 ELSE 1 END) AS [new_count]

This would not add a lot of overheads to your query. (tested mssql 2008)