David Johnston wrote:

> I thought that in order to call the Coalesce function the system
> would have to know the value of all parameters. There is no lazy
> instantiation in SQL.

Tom already addressed the main question, but I want to clarify this
point. COALESCE is not a function; it is defined by the standard as
a short form of a CASE statement. The syntax just makes it look
similar to a function. As a CASE statement, it stops when it finds
the right (non-NULL) case.

-Kevin


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