question

I have a rating section on a website. It has radio
buttons with values 1-5 according to the rating level.
Lastly there is a null option for n/a. We use null for
n/a so it's excluded from the AVG() calculations.

We used nullif('$value','') on inserts in mssql. We
moved to postgres and love it but the nullif() doesn't
match empty strings to each other to return null other
than a text type, causing an error. This is a major
part of our application.

AKA nullif('1','') would insert 1 as integer even
though wrapped in ''. Also nullif('','') would
evaluate NULL and insert the "not a value"
accordingly.

Is there a workaround for this so it doesn't break our
rating system? We cannot always enter a value for a
integer column. Is there any other way to accomplish
this? Please help.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - You care about security. So do we.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail