Martijn Tonies wrote:
We're arguing about whether or not your database design
(as stored on disk) should contain NULLs.
IMO: no, or at least as few as possible.
I believe the answer really is - *it depends*.
You are both right, really. Martijn, yes, according to academia and
proper database design, you should not really be using NULLs, (Rhino,
see the writings of Chris Date and Fabian Pascal somewhere like
www.dbdebunk.com, www.thethirdmanifesto.com etc.). Here's a good one:
http://www.dbdebunk.citymax.com/page/page/1396241.htm
Of course, you're still going to pay $10-$15 for this..
However, what is good for academia is *not* always good for the real
world. Why store "Unknown" in a column for a table that could store
millions, or billions, of rows, when you could simply allow a NULL (and
save a *bunch* of disk space across your schemas) in the real world. If
you can allow for the use of the NULL in the application, and *not* try
to interpret it 5 ways from Sunday, then, in my honest opinion, a NULL
would be acceptable.
Short answer, as long as you do it without trying to get your
application to handle them in many different ways, I don't see a great
problem (when weighing them against extra costs, in both space and
speed). If you can get away with not using NULL as well, then great.
This argurment will, however, carry on between "academia" and "the real
world" for at least the next 4000 years. :)
Best regards
Mark
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Mark Leith, Support Engineer
MySQL AB, Worcester, England, www.mysql.com
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