Re: null capable fields

[Jim Langston <jlangston@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Null fields mean "value not added".  If you see a date that's a null, you
know it means it was never entered.  If it was 0/0/0 then a lot of programs
would bomb on date checking.  And if you didn't' bomb out on date checking,
how do you know the user didn't type in 0/0/0 as the date?

Null is like, undefined.  Say you have an inventory program, and you are
mass creating inventory records.  You have a Current Quantity field.  Without
Nulls, it will be pre loaded with 0, now, does this mean that you have zero in
stock, or that it is the pre loaded value?

But, with null fields, you can see (programmatically) that it is null, which
means
that the value was never entered.  And work on that scenario.

Regards,

Jim Langston

"McCallion, Martin" wrote:

> > I'd love to believe that was the case but I don't think so.
> > Simple fact of the
> > matter is that most people don't even know such things exist.
> > Of those that do,
> > a large percentage don't see the point in using them.
>
> So tell us: what _is_ the point of them?
>
> Regards,
>
> Martin.
>
> --
> Martin McCallion
> Midas-Kapiti International
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