No worries. My response was sent in jest. J
From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Grooms, Frederick W Sent: December-04-12 17:33 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: 'field' != 'DB.field' ** I hate Outlook at times as I had double quotes in what I sent. And actually I wanted the AND as I was specifically looking to exclude the case where the field from the API program was the empty string (double quotes) AND the database was a NULL. With an OR the filter would skip logging to the audit trail a case of setting the field from NULL to anything ( field != DB.field ) AND (NOT (( field = “”) OR ( DB.field = $NULL$ ))) ( “X” != $NULL$ ) AND (NOT (( “X” = “”) OR ( $NULL$ = $NULL$ ))) ( TRUE ) AND (NOT (( FALSE ) OR ( TRUE ))) ( TRUE ) AND (NOT ( TRUE )) You are correct that the API should use the NULL but you can’t always rely on other people to program the same way Fred From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ben Chernys Sent: Tuesday, December 04, 2012 10:12 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: 'field' != 'DB.field' ** Oops. You’ve got a syntax and semantic error in your expression. You need quotes and the last and should be an or. A single value is hardly likely to be NULL and “”. ( field != DB.field ) AND (NOT (( field = “”) OR ( DB.field = $NULL$ ))) I know it’s just a typo J The API program should not be inserting a zero length string but rather the “ARValueStruct” of type NULL. I’m not sure what dev studio does with that expression though. It may convert the “” to $NULL$. Meta-Update certainly considers them equivalent in expressions, assignments, and queries. Cheers Ben Chernys Web: <http://www.softwaretoolhouse.com/> www.softwaretoolhouse.com -----Original Message----- From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Grooms, Frederick W Sent: December-04-12 16:55 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: 'field' != 'DB.field' Unless you are doing some other work the $NULL$ will look like to a human (but not to a system) field != DB.field should produce the following results: Field DB.Field Result of Field != DB.field NULL NULL TRUE Empty string NULL FALSE SomeText NULL FALSE As data is stored in the database the ARS system converts strings of 0 length (empty strings, aka ) to NULL. Off the top of my head Since you want to treat the same as NULL you may want to use a Run-If something like ( field != DB.field ) AND (NOT (( field = ) AND ( DB.field = $NULL$ ))) Fred -----Original Message----- From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Raj Sent: Tuesday, December 04, 2012 9:42 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: 'field' != 'DB.field' ** Thanks Jiri, so from your reply. Then I should see in my Audit log something like this(API pushing ""-zero length character):- "Value changed from to "" " but I do not that, I only see "Value changed from to ". -----Original Message----- From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Jiri Pospisil Sent: Tuesday, December 04, 2012 3:50 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: 'field' != 'DB.field' ** Raj, You mentioned API update and from the condition you suggested below, it looks like the update in fact sets the field value to zero length character, i.e. . That in my experience is different from NULL value, which would explain why your filter is firing. Also looking at your logic in the filter, to me it seems that the second set field will always result in saying value changes from new value to new value as I cannot see where the old value would come from. Hope this helps Jiri Pospisil Remedy specialist LCH Clearnet _ARSlist: "Where the Answers Are" and have been for 20 years_ _______________________________________________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at www.arslist.org "Where the Answers Are, and have been for 20 years"
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