Spotfire Ideas Portal
User is stating that IF statements do not handle nulls as expected in calculated columns, or in limit data by expressions on a visualisation. Here is an example:
3 rows of data:
ID Value
1 Complete
2
3 Not Complete
Where in ID 2 , the value for the Value column is a null.
If user do a limit data by expression on the visualisation [Value] != "Complete" what user find is only ID 3 is shown.
However User expects ID 2 also to be shown as it does not equal "complete" either as it is NULL.
If user add a calculated column checking for the same value the same problem occurs.
User Comment : I realise if I was writing this in C# or SQL then I might expect to handle nulls separately, however for data filtering in a tool like Spotfire I do not think this is right. I would not expect to have to always put in code for nulls in every if statement when checking for values.
While this is sort of confusing, it is good data handling practice as NULL and empty are different things and tests often need to check for this. I have never found it to hard to handle with SN (Substitute Null)