Re: Eliminating Nulls

From: John <no_at_email>
Date: Fri, 01 Jul 2005 16:26:54 +0100
Message-ID: <42c560be$0$13769$db0fefd9@news.zen.co.uk>

Mark D Powell wrote:
> Splitting the row into two tables where all the attributes are related
> to a single entity is a violation of the rules of normalization.

Respectable references please.

It is
> also inefficient.

In the short term, perhaps.

In the real word you do not always have or know a
> specific data item.

Agreed. But i've never come across a "null" in the "real world" either.

Nulls are not difficult to deal with though SQL
> Server does vary from the ANSI standard in a couple of situations.

Lets discuss the theory rather than the implementation.

>
> 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.

If you never allow null values you will never " run into serious problems related to handling NULL values".

>
> IMHO -- Mark D Powell --
>
Received on Fri Jul 01 2005 - 10:26:54 CDT