if it's known that there are only two values to candidate for the result of a column,

ifnull(a, b) as a_or_b_1

and

coalesce(a, b) as a_or_b_2

will give the same result. but which is faster? when searching i found this article, which says ifnull is faster. but it was the only article i found. any views on this?

thanks in advance :)