I'm a newbie to SQL so this might be a simple question...I was given the SQL syntax below but I think it could change to the second SQL statement further below

SELECT age,
       highage
FROM agetable
WHERE (highage IS NULL
        AND age BETWEEN '20' AND '30')
        OR ((highage IS NOT NULL)
             OR (age BETWEEN '20' AND '30'
                  OR highage BETWEEN '20' AND '30'))

I think it just could be reduced down to:

SELECT age,
       highage
FROM agetable
WHERE (age BETWEEN '20' AND '30'
         OR highage BETWEEN '20' AND '30')

Don't the 'highage IS NULL' and the 'highage IS NOT NULL' statements just cancel each other out b/c of the OR?

Thanks.

hi there.. a quick view says no... look at what are you doing in the first case.. you are selecting rows that futfill this cases:
A) age between 20 and 30 and no highage
b) has a highage OR age or highage between 20 and 30..

there are to diferents conditions.. at least at first sigh...

HTH

Gonzalo

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As Gonzalo said, the answer is no.

The reason is because IS NULL and IS NOT NULL appear on different sides of the OR operator hence do not cancel each other out.

If you are only trying to get rows where the highage is 20 to 30, however, you should remove the (highage IS NOT NULL) expression as this will always evaluate to true if the left side of your or condition has failed and thus will allow any highage value that isnt null.

hth.

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Thanks for the input!
F