Eric Howe
Member since Jul 9, 2009
- Profile: /members/3768-eric-howe.htm
- Comments: 6
Recent Blog Comments By Eric Howe
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Why NULL Values Should Not Be Used in a Database Unless Required
Posted on May 19, 2014 at 7:55 PM
@Colin, This might be of interest to you: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/... read more »
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Why NULL Values Should Not Be Used in a Database Unless Required
Posted on Mar 28, 2014 at 9:39 PM
@Andrew, Why use the non-standard ISNULL when standard SQL has COALESCE? Especially when you're taking a shot at someone for not understanding SQL.... read more »
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Why NULL Values Should Not Be Used in a Database Unless Required
Posted on Mar 19, 2010 at 12:10 PM
@Ben Nadel, Are you saying that correct data doesn't have any business value? Nonsense. What about referential integrity and foreign keys?... read more »
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Why NULL Values Should Not Be Used in a Database Unless Required
Posted on Jul 18, 2009 at 10:27 PM
@Ben: You said "There are certainly times when they should and have to be used; a binary tree might be a great example of place where it should be used (although I'd probably argue that a parent node ID of zero would / should indicate no parent just as well as NULL would)." If you do it this way... read more »
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Why NULL Values Should Not Be Used in a Database Unless Required
Posted on Jul 11, 2009 at 3:56 PM
@Ben, I'm not talking about dates in particular, I'm talking about NULL in general. For example: say you have a blog/article/page/... that can have a comment thread but doesn't necessarily need one. In the database you will have "blog.comment_thread" FK'ed to "comment_thread.id" and "blog.comme... read more »
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Why NULL Values Should Not Be Used in a Database Unless Required
Posted on Jul 9, 2009 at 10:55 PM
Has no here heard of foreign key or unique constraints? You get away with FKs and NOT NULL by forcing the foreign table to have a special reserved value which means "not there" but that's a horrible kludge that will keep on giving and giving. However, without NULL you can't have have a "unique if ... read more »