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  • Subject: Re: Null Capable Fields
  • From: "R. Bruce Hoffman, Jr." <rbruceh@xxxxxxx>
  • Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 14:38:52 -0400

boothm@earth.goddard.edu wrote:
> 
> ok, my curioisty is piqued.  What problem does a "null-capable" field
> solve?  I thought it's only function was to signal a data field's
> virginity, and I can't imagine a problem that solves.
> 
> btw, please be gentle as you explain my idiocy, ok?

No, not a stupid question at all. Many people that have not worked with
nulls before, can't really imagine what they are used for.

The simplest explaination is the example of gender. The field could be M
for Male and F for Female. But, what value do you code if you just don't
know, say you took a phone call and they said their name was Francis.
Could be either, you are not sure. So, you could code a specific value
for "undetermined" but you know in your heart that they are one or the
other. So the null value is placed in the field to indicate that the
information was missing or not supplied.

On second thought, I guess the name should have been "Pat", huh?  <VBG>

-- 
===========================================================
R. Bruce Hoffman, Jr.
 -- IBM Certified AS/400 Professional System Administrator
 -- IBM Certified AS/400 Professional Network Administrator

"The sum of all human knowledge is a fixed constant.
    It's the population that keeps growing!"
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