RE: Using 12/31/9999 in a date field

I've always used this as an end date as opposed to nulls. While I can deal with nulls just fine ( I prefer them, especially for statistics ), but when dealing with users, I find too often that code fails to produce the desired result set due to not properly taking nulls into account.  

For me, it becomes a question of which do you prefer; a little ugly or crap results?  

From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org
[mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org] On Behalf Of Jay.Miller_at_tdameritrade.com
Sent: Wednesday, December 18, 2013 10:53 AM To: oracle-l_at_freelists.org
Subject: Using 12/31/9999 in a date field  

I've always told people to avoid this like the plague but I'm now on a call with a developer who says Oracle in general and Tom Kyte specifically have changed their position on this and they now recommend it.  

Has anyone heard anything about this or have a white paper or link that I can review? Or if it still isn't a good idea (I have a hard time imagining it is but maybe the optimizer has gotten a lot smarter) have a link showing the opposite more recent than the 2008 Tom Kyte article?  

Thanks!  

Jay Miller      

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