Nice question. On of the first editions of the .NET data libraries had NULL value operator and could not read or assign NULL to a value.

IMHO - NULL values are useless and concat helps us reduce the amount of ISNULL code needed when having to parse together names when the Middle name may be NULL value 45% of the time, a non breaking space 10%, a '' or empty string.

Thanks M$ for adding something that acts more like & and less like the add function.