- In this example, or **CASE** experssion must determine if the **SellEndDate** column is *NULL*. Typically, when you are trying to check the value of a column you can use the **=** operator; for example the predicate **SellEndDate = '01/01/2005'** returns **True** if the **SellEndDate** value is *01/01/2005*, and **False** otherwise. However, when dealing with *NULL* values, the default behavior may not be what you expect. Remember that *NULL* actually means *unknown*, so using the **=** operator to compare two unknown values always results in a value of *NULL* - semantically, it's impossible to know if one unknown value is the same as another. To check to see if a value is *NULL*, you must use the **IS NULL** predicate; and conversely to check that a value is not *NULL* you can use the **IS NOT NULL** predicate.
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