title: Is there a function equivalent to the Oracle's NVL in MySQL?
body: <p>I'm selecting the max of a column from a table. But there is one problem: if there are no rows in the table, it returns null. </p>
  
  <p>I want to use a function which will return a certain value if the result is null. For example with Oracle there is the <code>NVL</code> function which gives a certain value if the column is null. Is there an equivalent function in MySQL ?</p>