Hi there, Okay, looks like I was looking/thinking about something else, so lets explain my problem. I want the pid inseted to be a "proper" number/integer, not a string/character, and the fun starts with several of my sources not having a pid entry, thus that field I would like to be filled with NULL values. However, it still gets escaped, and when it gets escaped, the NULL is not null anymore, but the string 'NULL' :( I was hoping that in some why I could coerce syslog-ng to understand that that column is a integer column, thus should not be escaped as it is currently done ;( I have the following destination: destination d_pgsql { sql(type(pgsql) host("127.0.0.1") username("logwriter") password("logwriter") port("5432") database("syslog") table("logs_${HOST}_${R_YEAR}${R_MONTH}${R_DAY}") #or whatever you want, example ${HOST}" for hosts, ${LEVEL}" for levels.. etc columns("datetime varchar(16)", "host varchar(32)", "program varchar(16)", "pid varchar(8) default null", "message varchar") values("$R_DATE", "$HOST", "$PROGRAM", "${PID:-NULL}", "$MSG") indexes("datetime", "host", "program", "pid", "message")); }; and the following log lines: Incoming log entry; line='<166>Feb 22 08:38:59 Vpxa: [2011-02-22 08:38:59.862 1B7A7B90 verbose \'App\'] [VpxaHalServices] HostChanged Event Fired, properties changed []' Running SQL query; query='INSERT INTO logs_somedevice_20110222 (datetime, host, program, pid, message) VALUES (\'Feb 22 11:39:27\', \'somedevice\', \'Vpxa\', \'NULL\', \'[2011-02-22 08:38:59.862 1B7A7B90 verbose \'\'App\'\'] [VpxaHalServices] HostChanged Event Fired, properties changed []\')'