Re: weird results from trivial SELECT statement

Brent Dombrowski wrote:
> Lonni J Friedman wrote:
>
>> Greetings,
>> I've got a Postgresql-8.4.x instance with a bunch of tables taht have
>> a text column (called 'active') that can contain any one of the
>> following values:
>> NULL
>> 'disabled'
>> <some other text string>
>>
>> When I run the following query, it seems to ignore NULL values:
>> SELECT * FROM mytbl WHERE active!='disabled'
>>
>> and only returns rows where active!='disabled' AND active IS NOT NULL.
>> Is postgresql implicitly assuming that I want non-NULL values?
>>
>> I can provide additional information, if requested.

> Unfortunately, there is only one NULL and it can take on several meanings.
> Because of this, most databases will not perform comparison operations on NULL.
> NULL is not comparable to anything, including itself.
> NULL == NULL will return FALSE on most systems.

"Most" databases? "Most" systems?

*ALL* SQL-compliant products.

--
Lew
Honi soit qui mal y pense.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/Friz.jpg