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SQL query help

Hi Experts,

I need to create a dataset from a query to show me what the last non blank value in 5 fields within a record. The fields are TID1, TID2, TID3, TID4 and TID5.

They will be populated in this way - either just the the first one, the first 2, first 3, first 4 or all 5. There are never any gaps so I so only need to return the last non-blank value.

For example.

TID1 TID2 TID3 TID4 TID5
14 232 244 (this sholod return 244)
13 231 (this should return 231)
12 238 238 256 (this should return 256)
14 237 250 279 410 (this should return 410)

Hope I have explained this well enough.

Thanks
Jon

JoelDev

On SQL Server, using T-SQL that would look like this:

SELECT COALESCE(TID5, TID4, TID3, TID2, TID1) AS Field
FROM SYS_Customer

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Using ANSI SQL it would look more like this.

SELECT CASE WHEN TID5IS NOT NULL THEN 
				TID5
			WHEN TID4 IS NOT NULL THEN
				TID4
			WHEN TID43IS NOT NULL THEN
				TID3
			WHEN TID2 IS NOT NULL THEN
				TID2
			ELSE
				TID1
			END AS Field
FROM SYS_Customer

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The basics of this is your are looking at the fields in reverse until you find one that isn't NULL. If you're comparing against an empty string, just change "IS NOT NULL" to compare for any empty string: "<> ''"

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OP_Zaharin

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MTillett

You say "non blank". Are we to assume that the columns are character datatype? Are they nullable?