What will the CASE statement return if no conditions are met and there is no ELSE clause?

The CASE statement in SQL serves to evaluate conditions and return a specific value based on the result of those evaluations. If none of the conditions specified in the CASE statement are met and there is no ELSE clause included to provide an alternative return value, the function defaults to returning null.

This behavior aligns with SQL standards, where the absence of a matching condition and the lack of a fallback value results in a null output. Returning null signifies that the CASE statement was unable to determine a valid result based on the provided conditions. This outcome is essential for understanding how to manage scenarios within SQL queries when multiple evaluations may not yield a match, thus highlighting the significance of handling potential null values in subsequent operations or logic.