SQL Practice Lesson 11 of 26

Messy data: NULLs and duplicate names

Real tables are messier than the ones you've queried so far. Values go missing (NULL), and two completely different people can share the same name. Neither breaks SQL, but both need handling - a raw NULL looks bad in a report, and a duplicate name is not a safe way to identify a row.

COALESCE(a, b) returns a if it isn't NULL, otherwise it falls back to b. Chain in a third or fourth argument and it keeps falling back until something isn't NULL. It's the standard way to turn a missing value into a sensible default before you display it.

There's a new people table: id, name, country. One row has no country on file, and two different people are both named Sam.

⚠️ Gotcha. NULL breaks != the same way it breaks =. WHERE country != 'USA' looks like it should return everyone not from the USA - but any row where country is NULL gets silently dropped too, because NULL != anything isn't false, it's NULL, and WHERE only keeps rows where the condition is true. To actually match or exclude missing values, you need IS NULL / IS NOT NULL alongside your comparison.

Your task: return each person's name and their country, showing 'Unknown' instead of NULL for anyone with no country on file.

You'll practice:

Replacing NULL with a fallback value using COALESCE
Recognizing why NULL needs special handling instead of a normal comparison

-- Return each person's name and country, showing 'Unknown' instead of NULL.
SELECT name, country FROM people;