title: NULL or BLANK fields (ORACLE)
body: <p>I'm new to Oracle, so my question might sound silly. I did go through the previous posts, but no luck.
  In the table, there is a column which is blank, and i am trying to find out the blank count in the column.
  I tried:</p>
  
  <pre><code>SELECT COUNT (COL_NAME) FROM TABLE WHERE COL_NAME IS NULL
  SELECT COUNT (COL_NAME) FROM TABLE WHERE COL_NAME = ' '
  SELECT COUNT (COL_NAME) FROM TABLE WHERE TRIM (COL_NAME)= ' '
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The result to all the queries above is 0</p>
  
  <p>However, when i did</p>
  
  <pre><code>SELECT COL_NAME DUMP (COL_NAME,1016) FROM TABLE
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>gave me:</p>
  
  <pre><code>COL_NAME       DUMP (COL_NAME,1016)
                 NULL
                 NULL
                 NULL
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>and so on..</p>
  
  <p>But there are hundreds or thousands of blank fields/empty fields in that column. Can anyone please help me to find <strong>count</strong> of those blank/empty fields in that column ?
  I am using Toad for Oracle 9.0.1.8</p>