Re: Date, Darwen, Pascal and the alternative to Nulls in the RM
Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2006 14:57:40 +0100
Message-ID: <dvrl4j$2ao$1_at_nntp.fujitsu-siemens.com>
paul c schrieb:
> Personally, I'm not bothered by the lack of a 'solution' to the supposed
> 'null problem' because I think 'users' are quite capable of making the
> interpretations they need to do - they make much harder ones all the
> time.
Sorry for barging in as a humble programmer, but how do I display missing
information and how do I check it?
Assuming the user got a mask to fill in and the spec says for some fields
that they are optional.
Ok, I can put those in a separate table and leave out those rows altogether.
But then the user wants the data retreived in matrix shape and he wants it
in one result set.
So I do an outer join and then what? That is, what goes in the place of the
missing values?
To be honest, so far I've been quite happy with NULL.
Lots of Greetings!
Volker
Received on Wed Mar 22 2006 - 14:57:40 CET