How do you handle adding nullable columns to each other in a query?

Question

Currently whenever I write a query that is adding columns that can contain nulls I resort to wrapping each field in isnull or coalesce, such as coalesce(score1,0) + coalesce(score2,0). Is there a better way to handle this, or is this the standard practice?

Can you elaborate? Are these insert / update statements? Are you adding a nullable column to a table, and want a default for existing records or new records? — Eric Humphrey - lotsahelp
– Eric Humphrey - lotsahelp, Commented Feb 2, 2011 at 20:13
@Eric Humphrey: Edited the question for clarity. The question was meant for querying columns that can contain nulls, and wanting to add some of them together. — goric
– goric, Commented Feb 2, 2011 at 20:24

Eric Humphrey - lotsahelp · Accepted Answer · 2011-02-02 20:35:47Z

That's pretty much what you have to do. Since NULL + anything else is NULL, you have to wrap each column in its own isnull(), coalesce() or CASE.

Gaius · Accepted Answer · 2011-02-02 21:17:27Z

Oracle provides NVL() for this scenario, ISNULL() is the equivalent in MS SQL Server. You could disguise all this in a VIEW to make your code clearer.

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