you could probably get rid of the case exceptions if you provide a value 0.0 instead of the NULL for the case where you need the other formulas. Both would work as expected when a value of 0.0 would substitute the NULL ... isn't it? ~~~ select null as V1, ifnull(NULL,0) as V2good, ifnull(3.14,0) as V3, 5-null as V4, 5-ifnull(null,0) as V5 ~~~ would produce as output: ~~~ V1 V2good V3 V4 V5 null 0 3.14 null 5 ~~~ as you can see, with value 0 you would get the found value reduced by nothing (0.0) while the null would not (and did not) give you the expected results. **ifnull** will also be your friend for future queries like **case** is already, I guess... have fun with SQL and SQLite3 !