It is also terrible to allow String fields to be NULL in the first place. The ONLY time things should be allowed to carry NULL is if there is no other
means to indicate 'No Value', such as a date. Strings should default to '', currency to $0, etc...

Jason

Clay Shannon wrote:

> Thanks Pavel and Woody. I fixed my data by doing this:
>
> step 1:
> update clients
> set firstname = 'Unknown'
> where firstname is null
>
> step 2:
> update clients
> set lastname = 'Unknown'
> where lastname is null
>
> step 3:
> update clients
> set middlename = ''
> where middlename is null
>
> step 4:
> update clients c1
> set c1.client_id =
> (select min(c2.client_id) from clients c2
> where (c2.firstname = c1.firstname) and
> (c2.middlename = c1.middlename) and
> (c2.lastname = c1.lastname))
>
> Clay Shannon,
> Dimension 4 Software