Re: Oracle NULL vs '' revisited

"Thomas Kellerer" <FJIFALSDGVAF_at_spammotel.com> wrote in message news:5im5abF3p468kU1_at_mid.individual.net...
>
>> I don't think that there is a similar "empty" concept for dates.
> That's my point. Character seems to be the only data were everybody
> requires the distinction between "nothing" and "empty" but nobody has ever
> requested this distinction for dates or numbers.
>

The question of whether we choose to refer to some value as "empty" is entirely beside the point in my opinion. The issue is that the domain of string values supported by Oracle is not equivalent to the domain of string values supported by any other DBMS or programming language that I know of. Null is not a value. A string consisting of zero characters IS a value anywhere except Oracle.

You could "design out" the problem as Daniel Morgan suggests but then you may have to accept that some process or function which potentially has to support zero-length string values can no longer use Oracle as a data store. Alternatively, you have to compromise by using nulls to represent values or converting the strings to some other data type or representation.

-- 
David Portas