BAH!

I'm using the string concatenation that is built into PostgreSQL to return a single column called name from four columns called firstname nickname middlename and lastname.

It works just fine....as long as, in any given tuple, none of the four columns is NULL. It's something like "multiply by zero," I guess.

The query "select initcap(firstname || '|' || nickname || '|' || middlename || '|' || lastname) as name from person;" returns an empty column if (in my case) the nickname column is NULL. This is not the behavior I wanted at all!

Busy changing the default entry on the name columns....