RE: My 10 Commandments of Database Administration...

Quoting from AUTHOR Mark W. Farnham:

> I think you're the one who gets to start cooking for Nuno. (Also

Thanks. Very rare steaks, please. Blue.

Seriously:
I think Allan was spot on in his description:

> Dear God! Oracle Financials uses NULL in end_date on fnd_login to
> indicate either the current login or an abrupt termination of the user
> session neatly making your point and potentially providing with an

As he points out: dual meaning. "either" is the killer. Not only we have a NULL suddenly meaning something now, but it may actually mean two things! How the heck can we write correct SQL for that? Other than go through hoops to try and reason things out via v$session?

That is one of the problems of assigning a "meaning" to NULL. Which meaning? The darn thing is NULL: I can't figure out a-posteriori what it means, can I? What stops someone else coming along later and giving it a third meaning, for example: "net is unplugged"? See what I mean? There is no end to it once you open the box.

Narh: NULL means exactly squat and must stay that way. Any attempt to give it a meaning results in more problems than it solves. In this day and age of multi-Tb disk capacities, it makes no sense whatsoever to skimp on adding columns for what are in essence different attributes.

-- 
Cheers
Nuno Souto
nsouto_at_bizmail.com.au


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