-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: Useful Oracle books - C.J. Date theory vs. practicality Dan Tow wrote:
troubles that relate to them. It is important to understand that null might mean "We don't know this property of this entity." OR it might mean "This
NULL means NULL and preciously NOTHING else. You cannot EVER assign a presumed meaning to something that means nothing.
single person, being a good example.) I'd personally like to see extensions to SQL to handle these subtleties. The subtleties are there, however, whether we
The extensions are there: they are called default values. And value constraints.
As soon as you append a value to the notion of NULL, it stopped being a NULL and is now a special case. Which you should handle using the value constraints.
The problem is that people CONTINUALLY refuse to believe that NULL means exactly that: nothing. And NULL more!
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