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
