Maarten, I am not an expert on databases, so you may be right. I always thought that was the argument for making this distinction explicit in XMLSchema, but nevertheless the fact is that the distinction is explicit. Here's what the XMLSchema primer has to say about this:
http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-0/#Nils Radu -----Original Message----- From: maarten [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, September 06, 2005 12:50 AM To: user@xmlbeans.apache.org Subject: Re: toString() problem Radu Preotiuc-Pietro wrote: >XMLSchema, as databases, makes a distiction between values "not present" and values "present, but set to null" that Java doesn't make (in addition to the distinction between "null" and "empty"). > > Radu, I don't quite follow what you mean with "as databases" What difference does a database make between "values not present" and "values present but set to null" ? I always thought that setting a value to null is saying "the value is not present" ? create table tab (a number, b varchar(10)); // value no present insert into tab (a) values (1); // value set to null insert into tab (a,b) values (1, null); How can I make distinction between these two rows ? On a sidenote: Oracle doesn't even make distinction between empty string and null, don't know about other databases though. Maarten --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
