Re: So what's null then if it's not nothing?

On Mon, 12 Dec 2005 11:10:23 +0100, Jon Heggland wrote:

>In article <1134354197.583597.21280_at_o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com>,
>boston103_at_hotmail.com says...
>> Apparently, whoever created this part of the standard had no clue
>> about what any kind of logic is.
>
>Or perhaps they thought it was not a problem at all to use the same word
>"NULL" for different concepts, behaving differently. After all, it is
>obvious from the context when NULL means 'missing' and when it means
>'unknown', no? :)

Hi Jon,

Maybe - but in that case, I'd expect at least a footnote in the definition of "the null value". There is none. So *if* the ANSI commitee decided to use the word NULL for a different concept in "boolean" columns, they forgot to update the definition.

It's possible, of course, but I'm more inclined to believe that they didn't realise they were breking the NULL propagation rule when they wrote it. Or they did realize but didn't care.

Best, Hugo

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