The Power of COALESCE()

Lukas Vileikis shows off a bit of ANSI SQL syntax:

When the need to deal with NULL values arises, multiple queries come onto the scene. The SQL COALESCE function is one of them. In simple terms, the SQL COALESCE function is a ‘fallback’ mechanism for missing data. Its only task is to return the first non-NULL value from a list of values.

I used to be a big believer in COALESCE() all of the time, but it turns out that ISNULL() is faster if you only have two things to compare. Granted, it’s not a huge difference in speed, as I recall, but the difference is there.