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NULL predicate (degree > 1)

Applies to ✅ Open Source Edition   ✅ Express Edition   ✅ Professional Edition   ✅ Enterprise Edition

The SQL NULL predicate also works well for row value expressions, although it has some subtle, counter-intuitive features when it comes to inversing predicates with the NOT() operator! Here are some examples:

-- Row value expressions
(A, B) IS     NULL
(A, B) IS NOT NULL

-- Inverse of the above
NOT((A, B) IS     NULL)
NOT((A, B) IS NOT NULL)
-- Equivalent factored-out predicates
(A IS     NULL) AND (B IS     NULL)
(A IS NOT NULL) AND (B IS NOT NULL)

-- Inverse
(A IS NOT NULL) OR  (B IS NOT NULL)
(A IS     NULL) OR  (B IS     NULL)

The SQL standard contains a nice truth table for the above rules:

+-----------------------+-----------+---------------+---------------+-------------------+
| Expression            | R IS NULL | R IS NOT NULL | NOT R IS NULL | NOT R IS NOT NULL |
+-----------------------+-----------+---------------+---------------+-------------------+
| degree 1: null        | true      | false         | false         |  true             |
| degree 1: not null    | false     | true          | true          |  false            |
| degree > 1: all null  | true      | false         | false         |  true             |
| degree > 1: some null | false     | false         | true          |  true             |
| degree > 1: none null | false     | true          | true          |  false            |
+-----------------------+-----------+---------------+---------------+-------------------+

In jOOQ, you would simply use the isNull() and isNotNull() methods on row value expressions. Again, as with the row value expression comparison predicate, the row value expression NULL predicate is emulated by jOOQ, if your database does not natively support it:

row(BOOK.ID, BOOK.TITLE).isNull();
row(BOOK.ID, BOOK.TITLE).isNotNull();

Dialect support

This example using jOOQ:

row(AUTHOR.FIRST_NAME, AUTHOR.LAST_NAME).isNull()

Translates to the following dialect specific expressions:

ASE, Access, Aurora MySQL, BigQuery, ClickHouse, CockroachDB, DB2, Derby, DuckDB, Exasol, Firebird, HSQLDB, Hana, Informix, MariaDB, MemSQL, MySQL, Oracle, SQLDataWarehouse, SQLServer, SQLite, Snowflake, Sybase, Teradata, Trino, Vertica

(
  AUTHOR.FIRST_NAME IS NULL
  AND AUTHOR.LAST_NAME IS NULL
)

Aurora Postgres, H2, Postgres, Redshift, YugabyteDB

(AUTHOR.FIRST_NAME, AUTHOR.LAST_NAME) IS NULL
Generated with jOOQ 3.20. Translate your own SQL on our website

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