Theory adrift: creative use of databases
From: Nicola <nvitacolonna_at_gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2015 15:34:44 +0100
Message-ID: <nvitacolonna-C63D50.15344318022015_at_freenews.netfront.net>
May I start a lighthearted thread? I'm sure you have funny accounts (or sad, depending on your sense of humor or your current mood) of "creative databases" to share!
123 Phyllis Sophical
...
345 Phyllis Sophical
...
456 (null)
...
567 (null)
millions of other records...
Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2015 15:34:44 +0100
Message-ID: <nvitacolonna-C63D50.15344318022015_at_freenews.netfront.net>
May I start a lighthearted thread? I'm sure you have funny accounts (or sad, depending on your sense of humor or your current mood) of "creative databases" to share!
From a real system:
create table Agent (id int primary key, name varchar(50) not null);
Instance (name is made up):
id name
123 Phyllis Sophical
...
345 Phyllis Sophical
...
456 (null)
...
567 (null)
millions of other records...
If it is not clear, that is the string '(null)'!
Real conversation:
- Look, 'name' is not unique.
- Yes, in the logical design it was also nullable, because from time to
time it may happen that we don't know the name of an agent. But then we
thought that we'd better store only full, clean, records.
- Oh well, let's leave those '(null)'s aside for a moment: what does it
mean that there are at least two Phyllis Sophical? - Uhm... I don't know. Possibly, they are two different people with the same name: you should check in the Address table whether there are two different addresses associated with id's 123 and 345, respectively...
Nicola
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