Re: Oracle NULL vs '' revisited

Thomas Kellerer wrote:

> But still: why is everybody whining about not having this distinction
> with strings but no one ever complained about not having it for DATES?

Because they can. It is a case of painting the target after the arrow was fired.

I belive Oracle defined NULL and zero-length strings before there was a standard. When competing vendors got together and created "the" standard no doubt some little bit of competitive was seen in defining the "standard" as they did.

Oracle has had a clearly defined implementation long enough that it is what it is and for reasons of not breaking everything ever built I expect it will stay that way.

One might speculate that after PeopleSoft, Siebel, JD Edwards, Stellant, Retek, and thousands more have this incorporated into their logic the standard will be the way Oracle is doing it as Ellison's boat runs on wind not whine.

Wait ... isn't that DB2 (Viper) including new "compatibility" features? Why yes I think it is. <g>

-- 
Daniel A. Morgan
University of Washington
damorgan_at_x.washington.edu (replace x with u to respond)
Puget Sound Oracle Users Group
www.psoug.org