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abhwhiz
Starting Member
37 Posts |
 Posted - 2007-09-19 : 22:41:45
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| I am writing a Select query where I need to select a column based on a condition. Its like thisSelect col1,col2 from tab1 where col1=val, col2=valNow what I want to to is to select the "col2" only if it is not empty.I want to select it otherwise. I thought CASE would help me, but I am not able to do it. Please help. |
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eyechart
Master Smack Fu Yak Hacker
3575 Posts |
Posted - 2007-09-20 : 00:13:05
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| select the column anyway, and deal with the fact that it is empty at the frontend application. -ec |
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abhwhiz
Starting Member
37 Posts |
Posted - 2007-09-20 : 00:25:53
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| do you think it is not possible in SQl Server? |
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eyechart
Master Smack Fu Yak Hacker
3575 Posts |
Posted - 2007-09-20 : 00:47:24
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quote:
Originally posted by abhwhiz
do you think it is not possible in SQl Server?
it would be possible, but it is silly to do. Each row you brought back in your select might have differing number of columns. Why don't you explain what you really want and we can help you with thta solution instead.-ec |
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associate01
Starting Member
3 Posts |
Posted - 2007-09-20 : 12:01:27
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| @abhwhiz:When you say you want to select col2 only if it is not empty do you mean only if every row in col2 is not empty? Or do you mean if a single row is not empty? Please give a little more detail about what you're doing and why you want to do it so we can answer the question. |
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Zoroaster
Aged Yak Warrior
702 Posts |
Posted - 2007-09-20 : 13:27:19
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quote:
Originally posted by associate01
@abhwhiz:When you say you want to select col2 only if it is not empty do you mean only if every row in col2 is not empty? Or do you mean if a single row is not empty? Please give a little more detail about what you're doing and why you want to do it so we can answer the question.
Based on what he wrote:Select col1,col2 from tab1 where col1=val, col2=valHe is asking that if col2=val returns a null then to not display col2 in the select list. As eyechart said, it is better to just handle that in the front-end, not sure what the requirement would be to do it in SQL?
Future guru in the making. |
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abhwhiz
Starting Member
37 Posts |
Posted - 2007-09-21 : 02:03:18
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| Actually there was a stored procedure to which i was passing three parameters in which the second one we might pass as '' at times, in that case I didnt want a particular column to be selected. I used COALESCE to solve the issue. First i put a if condition to store NULL to the variable, if '' is passed and used COALESCE to select the value.Thanks a lot for you help eyechart, i have already told the dev team to have a look. |
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Selecting a column based on a Condition