Isn't '' and NULL different???

Oracle is handling inserts of '' (empty string) in a very strange way. For inserts its treating '' as NULL (so if a table t1 has field c1 which is say "char(10) NOT NULL" and I try inserting '' into it then I get an error saying NULL not allowed). This is strange as in RDBMSs '' is not really NULL.

Another strange thing is that in select statments '' and NULL are not treated as same. eg.
create table t2(c1 char(10) NULL);
insert into t2 values('');
select * from t2 where c1 = '' --> this doesn't return any rows (this behavious is what would happen in other RDBMSs)!!

The behavious of Oracle in insert for '' seems strange. What do you Oracle gurus feel about this? Is there any way in which I can change this behaviour to make it the same as other RDBMSs?

Thanks,
- Manoj Received on Tue Jul 10 2001 - 10:05:23 CEST