Re: Joins with nulls

From: David Cressey <david_at_dcressey.com>
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 13:36:55 GMT
Message-ID: <XT3F9.297$0I3.31567_at_petpeeve.ziplink.net>


> The view that the incompleted tuple must be discarded results in a
> system that is inferior to pen and paper because it loses
> information.

I think you are talking about transactions at two different levels here.

There's the transaction between the user and the application, which might remain hung, because the user didn't complete a form.

Then there's the transaction between the application and the database, which should either be atomically complete, or invisible.

The application, using a background process, could complete the transaction, if necessary.

All of which is quite beside the point about nulls. As I said before, it's possible to design a relational schema which accommodates your needs including partial information without recourse to NULLS. Whether that should be done, or whether one should just use NULLS, is another matter. Received on Wed Nov 27 2002 - 14:36:55 CET

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