Re: default value returned from sql stmt

On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 9:16 AM, David Salisbury <salisbury@globe.gov> wrote:
> development=# select  coalesce(anum,100) from t1 where anum = 4;

What you have there is rather different from COALESCE, as you're
looking for a case where the row completely doesn't exist. But you can
fudge it with an outer join.

Untested code:

WITH rowid AS (select 4 as anum) SELECT coalesce(anum,100) FROM rowid
LEFT JOIN t1 ON rowid.anum=t1.anum

However, you may simply want a WHERE [NOT] EXISTS predicate. There may
be other ways of achieving your goal, too.

ChrisA