Re: c.d.theory glossary - NULL

I am sorry you think I'm trolling. I'm serious.

Special Values like "Not Available" or "Inapplicable" are really not values, if you think about them.
Adding them to the domain is just a perverse use of the domain. It's a kludge.

If there is a NULL bit for every cell, as there should be in a good RDBMS, it should be set to NULL
in the cases listed above.

Abraham Lincoln was fond of asking this riddle: "How many legs does a dog have if you call a tail a leg?" The right answer is four, not five. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it so.

Calling "Not Available" a value doesn't make it so. Calling this comment a troll doesn't make it so. Received on Mon Apr 26 2004 - 06:55:50 CDT