[dba-SQLServer] NULLs

kudos,    That is an excellent example! but I would think that this example
would not justify nulls but enforce the odd -1 rule, ie,  marking items as
unknown.  When was the last time you were allowed to leave an area of the
medical form just blank?  there is always an entry for -other-;  data entry
systems also generally allow for the unmistakable -other/unknown- field.

it seems to make more sense to people than simply not filling out an area of
the form.


-Francisco
http://sqlthis.blogspot.com | Tsql and More...


On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 8:06 AM, Susan Harkins <ssharkins at gmail.com> wrote:

> A hospital is a good example -- you can have a patient in the system, but
> not know anything about them, not even their name!
>
> If you're really worried about nulls, you can force users to choose from a
> set of null items: None, Unknown, and so on, which further forces problems
> because you're forcing a data type, regardless of how you fill it.
>
> Susan H.
>
>
> I was simply giving an example of  how such a join might look.  Also, I
> thought it would be odd for a company to hire an employee w/o already
> having
> a position to fill, generally I've never seen this to be true, but possibly
> does happen, just haven't ran into it myself.
>
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