Masking Function CONCAT returns a NULL when a NULL is in any of the fields being used

Products

• CA Test Data Manager (Data Finder / Grid Tools)

Issue/Introduction

While testing the CONCAT Masking Function, we noticed anytime one of the fields that are being concatenated together contains a "null" value, the final result of the concatenation is "null".

For example we have the following fields:

First Name
Middle Name
Last Name
Full Name

The masking configuration for Full name is 

Final results in the Oracle database:

We expect the concatenated full name to be something like FirstName (null), LastName, and not (null).

Cause

This is working as designed.

Environment

Release : 4.10

Component : Web Portal - Data Masking

Resolution

However, Product Management will place this in the backlog as a possible future enhancement, to process a NULL value as an empty string. Product Management can't commit to making this change, since this could break the behavior that many other customers have requested, but they will look at it and consider it. Perhaps they can add a parameter to how to treat a Null value.