You can already us the IS operator with a right-hand side of NULL. For example: "x IS NULL" or "x IS NOT NULL". What I am proposing is to expand IS so that the right-hand side can be an arbitrary expression. Like this: "x IS 5" or "x IS NOT y".
The motivation for this change is so that one can compile statements that use "?" as the right-hand side of IS and then insert NULL or a value as appropriate.
In the last 5 years coding against SQL Server, I've *never* needed such an operator. I've gotten so used to coding SQL statements to properly check for null before checking for a value that I don't even notice the effort anymore.
That said, I like the idea. There are somethings that would be much easier. Is there any precedent for it in the SQL-92 standard, or is it something completely new?
*IS* is pretty cool for MS, Sybase, Oracle, but for other SQL92 databases joins are required, so x in (sql) is rather useless
sql != sql92
mak
