Add preferences/options on how null values should be default handled.

Add an option to  Spotfire that allow you to configure how NULLs are handled when used in expressions and calculations. For instance I would like the option to specify that when using an expression or calculation, that NULLs are treated as empty strings, or as 0’s rather than as a c# NULL. Examples of how this would work are; for strings:

Category Value

A Complete

B

C Not Complete

The expression [Category] != “Not Complete” would return A and B (currently in Spotfire only A would be returned).

The calculated column if([Category] != “Not Complete”, True, False) would put a True against rows A and B (currently in Spotfire only A would be true, and B would be NULL)

For numbers:

Category Value AnotherValue

A 3 2

B 3

C 5 1



The expression [Value] + [AnotherValue] would return 5, 3, and 6 for A,B and C respectively (currently Spotfire returns 5, NULL, and 6).

This would bring the handling of nulls to be consistent with how they are handled for OVER expressions where the NULL values are treated as empty strings or 0’s. One crucial part of this new option in Spotfire is it does NOT alter the actual data in the data table (NULLs must stay as NULLs), it only affects when expressions and calculations are done on these columns with NULL values.{quote}