title: Handling Ignoring Empty Values in Porting SQL Data
body: <p>I am in the process of porting over some data from a SQL environment to my MongoDB backend. I'm familiar with using a NULL check with your SELECT statement, like so:</p>
  
  <p><code>SELECT * FROM clients WHERE note is not NULL ORDER BY id_number</code></p>
  
  <p>... but in this old SQL database table I'm noticing a lot of rows where the value is not null, it's simply empty. It would be pointless to port these across. So what would it look like to prevent pulling those over -- in terms of the SELECT statement syntax? </p>
  
  <p>To clarify "note" values are of type <code>varchar</code>. In JavaScript I would just guard against an empty string <code>" "</code>. Is there a way to do this with a SQL statement?</p>