Re: Why is database integrity so impopular ?

On Oct 14, 12:28 am, David BL <davi..._at_iinet.net.au> wrote:
> On Oct 14, 12:17 am, DBMS_Plumber <paul_geoffrey_br..._at_yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
> > If you mandate that a column cannot contain a NULL, setting a DEFAULT
> > means that when a programmer legitimately doesn't have a value for the
> > column they aren't obliged to put in there the first thing that
> > springs to mind.
>
> How can a programmer legitimately not have a value for the column?
> Doesn’t that imply that the schema is inadequate (for supporting
> partial information)?

In engineering, shit happens. Design with failure in mind.

I'm not going to argue for two weeks with 'Max' in accounting about about whether he has a legitimate reason to not know the close date of some transaction. Waste. Of. Time. I'm not going to expect perfection; especially not out of programmers.

It seems prudent management practice as well as sound engineering to say simply that "If you don't know - that's OK - just go with the default." Received on Tue Oct 14 2008 - 19:09:22 CEST