check for null date in CASE statement, where have I gone wrong?

Question

Hello,

My source table looks like this

Id     StartDate
1      (null)
2      12/12/2009
3      10/10/2009

I want to create a select statement, that selects the above, but also has an additional column to display a varchar if the date is not null such as :

Id     StartDate    StartDateStatus
1      (null)       Awaiting
2      12/12/2009   Approved
3      10/10/2009   Approved

I have the following in my select, but it doesn't seem to be working. All of the statuses are set to Approved even though the dates have some nulls

        select
             id,
             StartDate,
        CASE StartDate
        WHEN null THEN 'Awaiting'
        ELSE 'Approved' END AS StartDateStatus
        FROM myTable

The results of my query look like :

Id     StartDate    StartDateStatus
1      (null)       Approved
2      12/12/2009   Approved
3      10/10/2009   Approved
4      (null)       Approved
5      (null)       Approved

StartDate is a smalldatetime, is there some exception to how this should be treated?

Thanks

Answer 1

Try:

select
     id,
     StartDate,
CASE WHEN StartDate IS NULL
    THEN 'Awaiting'
    ELSE 'Approved' END AS StartDateStatus
FROM myTable

You code would have been doing a When StartDate = NULL, I think.