NULL vs. empty

Hi all,

I have the following problem:

We are loading ASN.1 coded data into 8i, runnning updates etc. on the loaded data and unloading it. When doing this we have to assure handling of empty fields in the ASN.1-coded data.

Explanation:

(1) no data in the ASN.1 coded data -> save it as NULL on DB
(2) data in ASN.1 -> save value on DB
(3) only tags without data in ASN.1 coded data -> save as 'empty' on DB,
but not NULL

We are using SQLLDR to load data onto DB, for strings we are able to divide between NULL and 'empty' fields by passing ,, (for NULL ASN.1 fields) and ,"\t", (for empty ASN.1 fields). This is a workaround because when unloading the data will be parsed as ASCII and blanks/tabs will be not read when working on unloaded data.

But how to do this for NUMBERS/INTEGER? Is there a way for passing a special value to the SQLLDR like 'NaN' or 'inf' etc. for determining empty (but not NULL) fields.

SQLLDR stops working when passing "" or "\t" for empty fields.

What is the best way to handle this problem on DB and for SQLLDR? Please do not mention about an additional column for each value... ;-)

Bye,

   Steffen Received on Mon May 24 2004 - 07:47:31 CDT