Re: Another angle on this....

On Wed, 20 Feb 2002, no.spam_at_ntlworld.com wrote:

> Fire when ready! Straw man again.... You do like them. I hope you
> didn't pay much for that book.<G> I'm not complaining about Oracle
> returning no rows from comparisons with Null value fields. Nor am I
> complaining that I can't have Nulls in unique keys. No db that I am
> aware of returns rows from null comparisons and the reference above to
> SQL Server doing it is mistaken. It definitely doesn't. Reading the
> snippet Tom Kyte has missed the point (deliberately?). He didn't
> notice that all other db platforms actually distinguish between blank
> and null (correctly).

I read the snippet. I didn't see anything other than Tom saying that the condition, x = NULL will never return a row. I thought this was the correct implementation. Oracle does have X IS NULL (ie, X is unknown)

> Presumably he is some Oracle high-priest and I'll now be burnt at the
> stake for heresy.
>
> To repeat; I am complaining that Oracle turns blank strings into
> Nulls. That is the indefensible behaviour. All of the rest is
> collateral damage resulting from the fact that Oracle doesn't appear
> to understand that "" is a valid value for a string field distinct
> from NULL. Lets put it another way, would you still defend Oracle if
> integer zeroes were considered as nulls and failed to match any query
> predicate other than "is null" and integer zeroes couldn't be in a key
> and appeared last in sorted lists etc. Come on.
>
> You and Tom Kyte are in a hole thats so deep I can't see either of you
> any more, just the frenzied earth flying out the top. Stop Digging.

I would stay away from trying to judge Tom Kyte's abilities. If he is so inclined, he could easily make you, me and all others on this group, (maybe even Jonathan Lewis) look like fools.

He certainly has helped me look like a star to my bosses and peers cause I just rework his examples on AskTom for my situations. :-)

-- 
Galen deForest Boyer
Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground.