Andrew,
FORCE NOT NULL is in any case a fairly blunt instrument - it doesn't work for a column of any type that doesn't accept an empty string as valid input, such as numeric types.
Con: this allows COPY to produce output which cannot be reloaded into PostgreSQL.
Pro: there is a lot of extremely broken external software which expects "nulls" to be expressed as "". This improves compatiblity with them.
-- Josh Berkus PostgreSQL Experts Inc. www.pgexperts.com -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers
