database design

[Michael Halcrow]

On Fri, Jun 10, 2005 at 08:55:58AM -0600, Stephen Smith wrote:
> Only NULL tells the truth in the data...the datum is unknown.  When
> bogus data is used to populate required fields, it will inevitably
> end up on a report that someone will misinterpret often to near
> catestrophic results for business.

Point well taken.  This is largely a question of application data set
semantics.  For the record, I am a proponent of setting up your
relational model in such a way so that you can differentiate between
``undefined'' and ``blank'' without having to resort to the
abomination that is NULL.

Mike
.___________________________________________________________________.
                         Michael A. Halcrow                          
       Security Software Engineer, IBM Linux Technology Center       
GnuPG Fingerprint: 419C 5B1E 948A FA73 A54C  20F5 DB40 8531 6DCA 8769

We have no formal dictionary for the images of our dreams. 
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