A Workbook Fails or Drop Records with ComputationException

Problem

A workbook with a simple filter that works with dates fails or drops records with the following execution:

ComputationException: Filter: (AFTER ... failed with NullPointerException: First argument of function 'AFTER' is null!
Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException: First argument of function 'AFTER' is null!

Cause

This exception occurs when there are empty (null) values in date columns where a simple filter is applied.

Datameer simple filter can't handle null values where the filtered column's data type is date. In such cases, impacted records are dropped or the whole execution fails, depending on the configured error handling method.

Solution

The best approach to mitigate such problem is to check if the filtered date column has empty values and replace them with a chosen date using Datameer Time and Date functions.

For example, the formula below checks for empty values in #data_column and replace them with today's date. All non-empty values remain untouched.

IF(ISNULL(#data_column);Today();#data_sheet!data_column)