need explaining - query nature

Dear All,

I have a little question for u guys...please help because i'm newbie here.

In our database, we have nullable field that categorize customer, for example the value for this field are A,B,C, and D.

In some case, i need to query for searching customer whose category is not "D". This mean i need to get customer
whose category are A,B,C and NULL

this is my first query:

select cust_id, cust_name, cust_catg from customer where cust_catg <> 'D'

anyway the result is all customer whose category are A,B,C, but the NULLs is not retrieved (however, I need NULL Categorize customer too)

so i change the query with the second one, then the result is fit with i expected

select cust_id, cust_name, cust_catg from customer where (cust_catg <> 'D') or (cust_catg is NULL)

Q:

is there any different in Query nature between SQL 2005 and 2000? because i remember that in sql server 2000 the first query is enough
to retrieve the result i wanted, but it is different in sql 2005, please CMIIW...

In SQL 2000 and 2005, the behaviour should be the same.
However, there are some session/connection settings that will affect the behaviour around NULLs in comparisons - check the entry for SET ANSI_NULLS statement in Books Online, and so on.
Actually, the behaviour that you saw in SQL 2000 is non-standard.

Hi Adriaan,
Thx for the reply...this is enough to answer my question...