How do I check if a Sql server string is null or empty

SELECT
   CASE WHEN LEN(listing.OfferText) > 0 THEN listing.OfferText 
        ELSE COALESCE(Company.OfferText, '') END 
   AS Offer_Text,

... 

In this example, if listing.OfferText is NULL, the LEN() function should also return NULL, but that's still not > 0.

Update

I've learned some things in the 5 1/2 years since posting this, and do it much differently now:

COALESCE(NULLIF(listing.OfferText,''), Company.OfferText, '')

This is similar to the accepted answer, but it also has a fallback in case Company.OfferText is also null. None of the other current answers using NULLIF() also do this.

Select              
CASE
    WHEN listing.OfferText is null or listing.OfferText = '' THEN company.OfferText
    ELSE COALESCE(Company.OfferText, '')
END As Offer_Text,         
from tbl_directorylisting listing  
 Inner Join tbl_companymaster company            
  On listing.company_id= company.company_id

Here is another solution:

SELECT Isnull(Nullif(listing.offertext, ''), company.offertext) AS offer_text, 
FROM   tbl_directorylisting listing 
       INNER JOIN tbl_companymaster company 
         ON listing.company_id = company.company_id

You can use ISNULL and check the answer against the known output:

SELECT case when ISNULL(col1, '') = '' then '' else col1 END AS COL1 FROM TEST

Here's a solution, but I don't know if it's the best....

Select              
Coalesce(Case When Len(listing.Offer_Text) = 0 Then Null Else listing.Offer_Text End, company.Offer_Text, '') As Offer_Text,         
from tbl_directorylisting listing  
 Inner Join tbl_companymaster company            
  On listing.company_id= company.company_id

To check if variable is null or empty use this:

IF LEN(ISNULL(@var, '')) = 0
    -- Is empty or NULL
ELSE
    -- Is not empty and is not NULL

[Column_name] > ' ' excludes Nulls and empty strings. There is a space between the single quotes.

When dealing with VARCHAR/NVARCHAR data most other examples treat white-space the same as empty string which is equal to C# function IsNullOrWhiteSpace.

This version respects white-space and works the same as the C# function IsNullOrEmpty:

IIF(ISNULL(DATALENGTH(val), 0) = 0, whenTrueValue, whenFalseValue)

Simple test:

SELECT
    '"' + val + '"' AS [StrValue],
    IIF(ISNULL(DATALENGTH(val), 0) = 0, 'TRUE', 'FALSE') AS IsNullOrEmpty
FROM ( VALUES 
    (NULL), 
    (''), 
    (' '), 
    ('a'), 
    ('a ')
) S (val)

This caters for spaces as well.

(len(rtrim(ltrim(isnull(MyField,'')))) !=0