Phil, I like columns with possible nulls. It makes the developers that use access code more for them as it doesn't know how to handle nulls. Ron >>> Phil Singer <psinger1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> 08/05/05 6:16 PM >>> rjsearle@xxxxxxxxx wrote: > On 8/2/05, Billy Verreynne (JW) <VerreyB@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > [snip] > An empty string is not the same as a number that is equal to zero. > [snip] > >>I don't know a better way to explain it than that. >> >>Well Mark, I in turn cannot understand why people do not seem to grasp >>the very fundemental concept of what a null is and what a value is. I >>do agree that dealing with NULLs in Oracle using state operators is >>not ideal as its easier to deal with NULLs using math operators (and >>in most other languages). But I do not agree with the misconception >>that an empty string is somehow different from a NULL string. > If we can spare the ramblings of someone who once studied analytic philosophy: A NULL qua Relational Databases: Missing data, all attributes unknown, could be anything. Therefore,in this sense , a NULL string cannot be the same as an empty string. An empty string has zero length, while a NULL string could have any length (if we only knew). A NULL, qua 3GL Programming usage: Big Nothing. Any attributes as empty as possible. Here, NULL and empty do seem synonymous. Similar to the confusion when calling PL/SQL from SQL where the PL/SQL has PL/SQL data types defined in terms of SQL data types. -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l