Re: A question of principle
Date: 1996/10/25
Message-ID: <54qmh2$pn8_at_shadow.CSUFresno.EDU>#1/1
Placing Blanks into columns in your database will lead to problems down the road. Forms will be unable to handle them without lots of special coding. And when you are coding, counting how many blanks there are between the quotes is going to be a pain.
I am a developer who has switched from COBOL/Mainframe programming, and nulls drove me nuts at first, but once you get used to the null concept, it ain't so bad.
Be sure to tell everyone about using the NVL function.
Steve Cosner
In article <01bbc113$f9982de0$6b19d280_at_freh-nt-007>,
Bard <bwskiles_at_adpc.purdue.edu> wrote:
>I am a DBA. We have several developers working with our setup of Oracle
>Data Warehouses. The source of our data is a mainframe.
>
>The question of principle has to do with transferring mainframe practices
>to the Oracle warehouse. Primarily, the use of "blanks" or "spaces" in
>place of NULLs. I am, on principle, opposed to using blanks where nulls
>ought to be. I find the blanks to be misleading and a misuse of Oracle. I
>also believe it sets a poor precedence for future Oracle applications.
Received on Fri Oct 25 1996 - 00:00:00 CEST