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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?

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    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
    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
    Commented Feb 2, 2011 at 20:24

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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.

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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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