How to find least non-null column in one particular row in SQL?

Question

I am trying to find the lowest number in two columns of a row in the same table, with the caveat that one of the columns may be null in a particular row. If one of the colum

Answer 1

One simple (yet not beautiful) solution is the following.

If you're looking for the smallest non-null value, you can use IFNULL with the second parameter beingthe 'INT limit'

ORDER BY LEAST(
    IFNULL(properties.sale_value, 2147483647),
    IFNULL(properties.rental_value, 2147483647),
    IFNULL(properties.daily_rental_value, 2147483647)
) ASC

And if you're looking for the biggest non-null value, you can use IFNULL with the second parameter being 1, ( or the first negative value below your limit, if you don't know it, use the negative int limit )

ORDER BY GREATEST(
    IFNULL(properties.sale_value, 1),
    IFNULL(properties.rental_value, 1),
    IFNULL(properties.daily_rental_value, 1)
) ASC