Re: Nullology of empty strings

From: Tim X <timx_at_spamto.devnul.com>
Date: 08 Jan 2003 01:39:25 +1100
Message-ID: <87d6n9vxb6.fsf_at_tiger.rapttech.com.au>


usenet_at_kikobu.com (Morten) writes:

> Hi. I'm curious about why the empty string '' IS NULL in Oracle databases.
> Is this a general convention? Where can I read up on the theory behind this?
>
> I would like to find out why this is so, and what the theoretical foundations
> are (relational calculus possibly?)
>
I think this is just a quirk of Oracle. Other systems I have used do not treat '' as NULL. Also, according to some oracle documentation I have seen, the '' as NULL in oracle is not guaranteed to be kept in future versions. I find this a frustrating situation personally.

Tim

-- 
Tim Cross
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Received on Tue Jan 07 2003 - 15:39:25 CET

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