Using CASE instead of COALESCE function and vice versa

Reports situations when CASE and COALESCE calls are interchangeable. This inspection has the following intention actions: Replace with 'COALESCE' call and the opposite one Replace with CASE expression.

Example (MySQL):

SELECT
  -- this CASE may be replaced by COALESCE
	CASE
		WHEN C1 IS NOT NULL THEN C1
		ELSE 0
		END
FROM dual;

In the example, the CASE statement can be replaced with SELECT COALESCE(C1, 0) that produces the same output.

If you prefer using CASE expressions, select the Prefer CASE expressions over COALESCE function option on the inspection page.

Locating this inspection

By ID

Can be used to locate inspection in e.g. Qodana configuration files, where you can quickly enable or disable it, or adjust its settings.

SqlCaseVsCoalesce

Via Settings dialog

Path to the inspection settings via IntelliJ Platform IDE Settings dialog, when you need to adjust inspection settings directly from your IDE.

Settings or Preferences | Editor | Inspections | SQL

Inspection ID: SqlCaseVsCoalesceInspection

Inspection options

Here you can find the description of settings available for the Using CASE instead of COALESCE function and vice versa inspection, and the reference of their default values.

Prefer CASE expressions over COALESCE function

Option ID:

preferCase

Default value:

Not selected

Suppressing Inspection

You can suppress this inspection by placing the following comment marker before the code fragment where you no longer want messages from this inspection to appear:

//noinspection SqlCaseVsCoalesce

More detailed instructions as well as other ways and options that you have can be found in the product documentation:

Inspection Details
By default bundled with:	CLion 2025.2, DataGrip 2025.2, DataSpell 2025.2, GoLand 2025.2, IntelliJ IDEA 2025.2, JetBrains Rider 2025.2, PhpStorm 2025.2, PyCharm 2025.2, Qodana for .NET 2025.2, Qodana for Go 2025.2, Qodana for JS 2025.2, Qodana for JVM 2025.2, Qodana for PHP 2025.2, Qodana for Ruby 2025.2, RubyMine 2025.2, WebStorm 2025.2

Last modified: 18 September 2025