Question : Equivalent for DECODE of ORACLE in SYBASE

What is the equivalent of the DECODE Function available in ORACLE , in SYBASE

Pls answer urgently

Answer : Equivalent for DECODE of ORACLE in SYBASE

I found this in the Sybase FAQ. may be useful for u.

Thanks,

Amit.
   
   There is a neat way to use boolean logic to perform cross-tab or rotation queries easily, and very efficeintly.

   Using the aggregate 'Group By' clause in a query and the ISNULL(), SIGN(), ABS(), SUBSTRING() and CHARINDEX() functions, you can create queries and views to perform all kinds of summarizations.
   
     This technique does not produce easily understood SQL statements.
     
   If you want to test a field to see if it is equal to a value, say 100, use the following code:
SELECT (1- ABS( SIGN( ISNULL( 100 - , 1))))

   The innermost function will return 1 when the field is null, a positive value if the field < 100, a negative value if the field is > 100 and will return 0 if the field = 100. This example is for Sybase or Microsoft SQL server, but other servers should support most of these functions or the COALESCE() function, which is the ANSI equivalent to Isnull.
   
   The SIGN() function returns zero for a zero value, -1 for a negative value, 1 for a positive value The ABS() function returns zero for a zero value, and 1 for any non-zero value.
   
   Put it all together and you get '0' if the value match, and '1' if they don't. This is not that useful, so we  subtract this return value from '1' to invert it, giving us a TRUE value of '1' and a false value of '0'. These return values can then be multiplied by the value of another column, or used within the parameters of another function like SUBSTRING() to return a conditional text value.
   
   For example, to create a grid from a student registration table containing STUDENT_ID and COURSE_ID columns,  where there are 5 courses (101, 105, 201, 210, 300) use the following query:
   
   SELECT STUDENT_ID,
          (1- ABS( SIGN( ISNULL( 101 - COURSE_ID, 1)))) COURSE_101,
          (1- ABS( SIGN( ISNULL( 105 - COURSE_ID, 1)))) COURSE_105,
          (1- ABS( SIGN( ISNULL( 201 - COURSE_ID, 1)))) COURSE_201,
          (1- ABS( SIGN( ISNULL( 210 - COURSE_ID, 1)))) COURSE_210,
          (1- ABS( SIGN( ISNULL( 300 - COURSE_ID, 1)))) COURSE_300
   GROUP BY STUDENT_ID
   ORDER BY STUDENT_ID