>Is the "empty" methodology NULL or a blank string? If NULL, then the comparison <> should be IS NOT ... Hmmm, that is the problems. Believe it or not, ss both. I get the data from a system, that apparently, would choose '' on some specific times, or null in others. For example, for this same SELECT, it works for some projects, but for others, it was not. So, I was killing myself trying to figure out why. So, I asked. But, then I figured that it must have been the data coming in with different values for nothingness: null or ''. So, coalesce is now working correctly. Thanks. josé