Re: NULL versus NOT NULL usage
Date: 1998/06/03
Message-ID: <35756519.783767CA_at_say_no_to_spam_tps-labs.de>#1/1
>>If you need to maintain a distinction between nothing
>>and a 0-length string, blank or zero, then your column
>>should be null.
But only if you are not using Oracle. An empty string is always stored as a null
string when using the varchar datatype...
>>Many client developers have an innate fear of null.
>>The practical use of the null set is foreign
>>to many of them. However, the client developers must
>>learn the null set.
But there are development environments which incorporate the NULL concept. In PowerBuilder each and every variable can be NULL (which does create some problems, escpecially with string concatenation, because NULL + something = NULL). PB provides to functions SetNull() and IsNull() to handle that...
Thomas
Who is user GENERAL FAILURE and why is he reading my disk? Received on Wed Jun 03 1998 - 00:00:00 CEST