Utility functions

This section is to provide an overview of specific functions that are difficult to categorize, but are broadly useful.

Function	Description	Example	Result
coalesce(element1, element2)	returns the first non-NULL value from the list of elements	coalesce(NULL, 'a', NULL)	'a'
ifnull(element1, element2)	a two-argument version of coalesce	ifnull(NULL, 'a')	'a'