Originally posted by Sybrand Bakker
> On 13 Jun 2003 02:12:46 -0700, andrewst_at_onetel.net.uk (Tony) wrote:
>
> >"Niall Litchfield" wrote in message
> news:news:...
> >> It seems that we agree that NULL='UNKOWN VALUE', but you don't
> like using ''
> >> for NULL in character based columns since you consider the
> absence of
> >> characters between the ' termination characters to be a value
> in some sense.
> >> If we accepted this what would you practically choose to store
> NULL
> >> character values in the RDBMS, and what implications would this
> have for
> >> storage ,manipulation etc.
> >I haven't a clue and don't see it as my problem. I thought
> Oracle
> >used a "null marker" to indicate that a column was NULL. For ''
> is
> >should store no characters, a character count of zero, and NOT
> have a
> >null marker. Maybe Oracle doesn't work that way, but it could.
> How
> >does it distinguish between 0 and null? My point is that
> logically,
> >'' is the character analogue of zero, not of NULL.
>
> Then Oracle is just not for you.
>
>
> Sybrand Bakker, Senior Oracle DBA
>
> To reply remove -verwijderdit from my e-mail address
Oh, 99.9% of Oracle is just fine for me. Just this one small thing they
could do better.
--
Posted via http://dbforums.com
Received on Fri Jun 13 2003 - 15:52:08 CDT
