Re: Eliminating Nulls

From: Mark D Powell <Mark.Powell_at_eds.com>
Date: 1 Jul 2005 07:16:52 -0700
Message-ID: <1120227412.080251.39150@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com>

Splitting the row into two tables where all the attributes are related to a single entity is a violation of the rules of normalization. It is also inefficient. In the real word you do not always have or know a specific data item. Nulls are not difficult to deal with though SQL Server does vary from the ANSI standard in a couple of situations.

Nevertheless, I have found that many of the situations where developers have run into serious problems related to handling NULL values actually trace back to design mistakes to begin with.

IMHO -- Mark D Powell -- Received on Fri Jul 01 2005 - 09:16:52 CDT