Re: So what's null then if it's not nothing?
Date: Mon, 05 Dec 2005 22:26:48 GMT
Message-ID: <I83lf.52802$Gd6.4842_at_pd7tw3no>
paul c wrote:
>...
> muddying the waters myself. Let me try again - I say that t1{} is a
> relation, so we have got a relational result, whereas select count(*),
> whatever it is, is not a relation, so we have not got a relational
> result. I'll give up at this point!
Maybe I should have said select count(*) is not always a relation - ie., the expression can't always be used where other relations can be used? Not sure. I'll leave it up to the SQL experts. For me, mucking around in SQL beyond simple statements in SQL is like going back to Cobol with all its arbitrary rules or Pl/I with its many more rules that were less arbitrary (once many years ago after we had a programming contest between different departments, the director forbade me from promoting any Cobol because I had used ALTER GOTO which had been arbitrated against in that shop. I thought it seemed in keeping with Cobol's arbitrariness. After that, if I wanted a Cobol change, I'd convince somebody else to do it. Maybe I was just afraid of those old compilers that would flag syntax errors and then if you ran them again without any change except giving them more memory, you'd get a clean compile!)
p Received on Mon Dec 05 2005 - 23:26:48 CET