Re: Is hex 00000 in a string field equal to null?

So, how I can bring that back to *blanks in SQL?

HEX(COALESCE(SUPV_COMMENTS, ' ')) and HEX(IFNULL(SUPV_COMMENTS, ' '))

Both don't seem to give me the expected result.

--
Mike Wills
http://mikewills.me


On Tue, Dec 6, 2011 at 2:20 PM, Joe Pluta <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:

Yes, x'00' is a null character (also known as NUL), which is NOT the
same as a null pointer, or as the null value for a field in SQL. In
RPG, you get this by setting a character field to *LOVAL. AFAIK, DB2
doesn't naturally initialize character fields to x'00', so I suspect
something is actively putting *LOVAL into your data.

Joe

I have been trying to figure out this bug in my .NET program for the last
couple months. For background, it is for signing time sheets. The .NET
program calls a stored procedure that executes a RPG program that marks

the

time sheet as signed. Occasionally, something happens (a couple times per
cycle for about 100 employees or so) that causes my program to crash
(please avoid the .NET jokes here). I might be able to handle the bug

okay

now that I know what to expect, but I am trying to determine what that

data

is and why it is in there.

I ran the following statement:

SELECT EM_FULL_N, HEX(EMP_COMMENTS), HEX(SUPV_COMMENTS) FROM MPRTCSP
WHERE EMP_COMMENTS<> '' OR SUPV_COMMENTS<> ''

and got the following result (edited for length):

HEX
HEX
4040404040404040404040404040404040404040...40
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000....00

I know x40 is blanks but what is x00. Is that null?

--
Mike Wills
http://mikewills.me

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