For any x
, null != x
will be null
and null
is not true
. That means that you can simply ignore NULLs in your case and say:
select * from users where name != ''
You could also convert NULLs to empty strings using COALESCE if that's clearer to you:
select * from users where coalesce(name, '') != ''
Of course that coalesce
call isn't free.