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RE: Database design dilemma - not null vs nullable

From: <Yosi_at_comhill.com>
Date: Fri, 5 Jan 2001 13:50:42 -0500
Message-Id: <10732.125873@fatcity.com>


Aaakk!

All not null! I have a hard time (philosiphically) forcing my users to not null anything other than primary keys. (I'd actually like to let them null PKs if they want to - but I don't.)

More basic than that is that many values must be null, meaning unidentified or nonexistent, which is not the same as 0 or some low date. Would you like to enter a 'low date' as someone's date of termination when they're still gainfully employed? Is your address2 field going to be ' ' or empty if the user only has a one line address?

Bad idea.

MHO only, but I can't imagine anyone disagreeing... (although obviously your vendor does, and I guess people will figure out how to disagree argue about anything, given the opportunity.)

HTH, Yosi

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Siv Chelakkara [mailto:Siv.Chelakkara_at_3cc.co.wayne.mi.us]
> Sent: Friday, January 05, 2001 1:21 PM
> To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
> Subject: Database design dilemma - not null vs nullable
>
>
> Hi all,
>
> We have an outside vendor developing an application, which we
> will ultimately inherit for maintenance. They are porting
> this application from a different database platform to
> Oracle, since we are an Oracle shop. They have decided to
> make every column in every table a NOT NULL column. They
> want to implement default values at the database level for
> every column (' ', 0 and some low date for varchar2, number
> and date) and then let the application validate and enforce
> significant data as required. I am looking for opinions on
> the pros and cons of this type of approach, both from a
> database and application point of view.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Siv
>
>
> --
> Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com
> --
> Author: Siv Chelakkara
> INET: Siv.Chelakkara_at_3cc.co.wayne.mi.us
>
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Received on Fri Jan 05 2001 - 12:50:42 CST

Original text of this message

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