[dba-SQLServer] NULLs

Last time I looked at the emergency room, I never saw anyone get turned away
for lack of social security.  again, I'm just playing devil's advocate,
simply to keep things interesting.

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


On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 8:57 AM, Susan Harkins <ssharkins at gmail.com> wrote:

> How do you reconcile the null item list with the actual data? The null list
> is text: Unknown, Not Applicable, and so on, but a social security number
> field is going to expect 9 digits, even if it's a text field, most will
> require those 9 digits -- how are you going to get around the other "best
> practice" issues for data entry and validation?
>
> Susan H.
>
> > 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.
> >>
>