I'm sorry maybe I missed something, but if you don't need NULLs and
feel they just add extra work, why don't you just declare all your
columns to be not null and have them default to zero or an empty string?
On Feb 22, 2007, at 5:11 PM, Glen Parker wrote:
Buy the same token, some application have no use whatsoever for the
distinction between NULL and ''. In that case, the distinction
just adds work.
I would love to see different ways to handle NULL implemented by
the server. For what I do, NULL could always compare equal to zero
and ''. I have no use for NULL in text values. I do need it for
numerics, however it doesn't mean "unknown", it just means "not
entered", which is different because I always treat it as zero.
I haven't put enough thought into this to make any sort of
comprehensive proposal, but it occurs to me that perhaps it could
be integrated into the type system. If I were able to specify, for
any given type, a value that should compare equal to NULL ('' for
varchar, 0 for int4, for example), that, in combination with NOT
NULL constraints, might just do it for me.
-Glen
Well, your mileage must vary. The absence of nulls would make my life
difficult.
Just substitute "unknown" for "null" as mentioned above and the
various
operations with "null" make sense. For example, take some days and
low-temperatures:
Mon: 30
Tue: 10
Wed: 0
Thu: unknown
Fri: 0
Sat: unknown
Sun: -5
Was the low temperature the same on:
Mon/Tue: no
Wed/Fri: yes
Thu/Fri: unknown
Thu/Sat: unknown <- the always seemingly confusing null=null is null.
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