At 02:13 PM 16-11-00 +1300, you wrote:

>Hi, all.
>
>With all the talk of additional builtin functions for IB6 e.g. making the
>current example UDF library available as builtins, a developer friend of
>mine (currently keen on Postgresql) was wondering when/if IB6 would have the
>following SQL92
>functions:
>
>COALESCE(list)
>IFNULL(input,non-NULL substitute)
>CASE WHEN expr THEN expr [...] ELSE expr END
>
>I don't actually have a SQL92 decoder ring at hand, so I'm taking his word
>for it that these _are_ SQL92 functions and not just (un)common extensions
>that other SQL engines have.

The SQL-92 functions are COALESCE, NULLIF and CASE.

CASE is on the drawing board for Firebird 1.x.
I agree, COALESCE is useful too - it avoids having write SPs to "pick" a
value from a list.
You can use CASE to implement NULLIF. The advantage of NULLIF stand-alone
is that it directly implements a very common test.

Helen


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