Blank vs empty square

Victoria_G1
Victoria_G1 Member
in SQL DataFlows

Hello everyone,

I encountered these two fields in one of my columns ("blank" vs empty square), which is messing a bit with my formulas. Why is this happening? What's the difference between the two?

Thanks so much!

image.png

Best Answer

  • Ashleigh
    Ashleigh Coach
    Answer ✓

    @Victoria_G1 I find that if someone put a space or nextline in the source data it may cause it to come through Domo as blank and not null. You can try to do a squash space in your formula and then a case statement that looks for both nulls and single spaces and replaces them with text like:

    case

    when COLUMN is null then 'Blank'

    when COLUMN = ' ' then 'Blank'

    else COLUMN

    end

    Here is the squash whitespace formula found in the formula tile

    image.png

    **If this answer solved your problem be sure to like it and accept it as a solution!

Answers

  • MichelleH
    MichelleH Coach

    @Victoria_G1 "Blank" typically means there is a null (i.e. no value). They empty square is most likely an empty string, which is a text value with a length of zero. Can you share a little more about the formula challenges you're experiencing?

  • Ashleigh
    Ashleigh Coach
    Answer ✓

    @Victoria_G1 I find that if someone put a space or nextline in the source data it may cause it to come through Domo as blank and not null. You can try to do a squash space in your formula and then a case statement that looks for both nulls and single spaces and replaces them with text like:

    case

    when COLUMN is null then 'Blank'

    when COLUMN = ' ' then 'Blank'

    else COLUMN

    end

    Here is the squash whitespace formula found in the formula tile

    image.png

    **If this answer solved your problem be sure to like it and accept it as a solution!

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