PostgreSQL – Work Around Average Behavior with Nulls

From a purely relational point of view (prior to sixth normal form), I don't see any need to move a set of columns out into a separate table, just because they are frequently null.

As a trivial example, consider a customer account table with an end date as one of the columns - until the customer closes their account, the end date will be NULL. You are therefore likely to have a large number of NULL values in the end date column, yet it would be a bad choice to move this out into a separate table.

However, as an implementation issue, there may be good reasons to split out certain fields into separate tables. For example, consider a customer address table; certain addresses may require complicated delivery instructions, yet the vast majority are not likely to require them. In such circumstances, it would make sense to have a separate table for address delivery instructions, even if it has the same key (customer address ID) as the main customer address table.

(As a side note, some experts on relational theory - such as Chris Date and Fabian Pascal - are opposed to allowing NULLs within relational databases at all.)

Don't know about Sybase but in SQL Server you can do like this.

select *
from yourtable
where value not in (select N
                    from (values (@var1),
                                 (@var2),
                                 (@var3),
                                 (@var4),
                                 (@var5)) T(N)
                    where N is not null)

If you can't use values to create a derived table you can use union all instead.

where value not in (select N
                    from (select @var1 union all
                          select @var2 union all
                          select @var3 union all
                          select @var4 union all
                          select @var5) T(N)
                    where N is not null)