T-SQL: select rows not equal to a value, including nulls

Question

How do I select rows which don\'t equal a value and also include nulls in the returned data? I\'ve tried:

SET ANSI_NULLS OFF
SELECT TOP 30 FROM Mails
WHERE a         


        

Answer 1

When you have a lot of conditions, typing everything twice stinks. Here are two better alternatives:

SELECT TOP 30 FROM Mails
WHERE COALESCE(assignedByTeam,'') <> 'team01'

The COALESCE operator returns the first non-null value in the list. If assignedByTeam is NOT null, it will compare the assignedByTeam value to 'team01'. But if assignedByTeam IS null, it will compare a blank '' to 'team01'. It's basically shorthand for the following:

SELECT TOP 30 FROM Mails
WHERE (CASE WHEN assignedByTeam IS NULL THEN '' ELSE assignedByTeam END) <> 'team01'

The second way is to make your condition conditional, for example:

SELECT TOP 30 FROM Mails
WHERE 1 = CASE WHEN assignedByTeam = 'team01' THEN 0 ELSE 1 END

In this example, the ELSE value will include all null rows, since they aren't equal to 'team01'.