This is a perfect case of a lopsided index if the column is indexed. It would result in a huge number of gaps in the leaf blocks as the records were updated to a valid date value. I would never recommend this.
On 12/18/2013 9:53 AM, Jay.Miller@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
I've always told people to avoid this like the plague but I'm now on a call with a developer who says Oracle in general and Tom Kyte specifically have changed their position on this and they now recommend it. Has anyone heard anything about this or have a white paper or link that I can review? Or if it still isn't a good idea (I have a hard time imagining it is but maybe the optimizer has gotten a lot smarter) have a link showing the opposite more recent than the 2008 Tom Kyte article?Thanks! Jay Miller