if statement MS SQL Newbie question

[bullyboy69]

Morning

Have a question. I have a webpage that gets generated with fields from a SQL database. I have 2 fields, firstname and lastname and use another field name that contains both called name. I want to write an if statement so that if the firstname is null then just the lastname is the name eg.

if firstname is null or = '' then
name = lastname
else
name = firstname + lastname

How do I do this in SQL as its proving to be a right pain!

Thanks
Nick

 

[JD1866DSC]

Don't use if, use CASE

ie

CASE
WHEN ISNULL(firstname,'') = '' THEN lastname
ELSE
firstname + lastname
END Name

Hope this helps

 

[bborissov]

try

SELECT ISNULL(firstname+' ','')+LastName AS Name

Borislav Borissov
VFP9 SP1, SQL Server 2000/2005.
MVP VFP