I have to disagree. Null as a place holder for an unknown value is a perfectly acceptable use of null. You've contrived an example that only shows how flawed the design was to allow null values into the database in the first place. It's not the 'null' or the 'select' that fails to count null values at fault, it's the table definition that allows for null values to be entered when none are expected to be there. If nulls are not part of your world then don't create tables that allow null values to be entered.