min(column) with nulls? I am new to databases, but I hope you can help me to understand something.

Take part of this query:


  select min(date) as date...


Assume that some of the dates are null. What effect would it have? Would the query break?
MIN will return the smallest non-NULL value.  The query won't throw an error, it will simply ignore the NULL values

SQL&gt; with x as (
  2    select null dt from dual union all
  3    select sysdate from dual
  4  )
  5  select min(dt)
  6    from x;

MIN(DT)
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21-OCT-11