Re: A question of principle

"Bard" <bwskiles_at_adpc.purdue.edu> wrote:
>I would appreciate any and all opinions. Am I being too uncompromising?
>(If it's of any use, we are using the star-join modelling technique as
>opposed to normalization.) Does anyone else out there allow only blanks
>to be entered into a field? If so, how is it working? Anyone out there
>replace blanks with nulls where there were already blanks? If so, did you
>have trouble teaching the users the concept of null values?

The problem with NULL values is that they introduce a third value into boolean logic. Most people do not automatically compensate for this and it is the source of a lot of errors.

Even after many years writing SQL scripts I find myself bitten by this error. According to a colleague of mine, there are even a few relational theorists that promote that NULL values have no place in relational theory.

My point is that you might consider what your coworkers have to say. I think it would be unusual, but is not a completely bad idea.

Bert Evans
Bert Evans
bevans_at_esper.com Received on Thu Oct 24 1996 - 00:00:00 CDT