>>I understand NULLS have a special purpose... but I think I'm starting to abuse it. For example, if we have a text comments area that saves to a varchar field, would it be proper to use NULL if the user left the text area blank, or would it be proper to use a blank string?
>>
>>Generally speaking, Andy and I only use nulls in datetime fields.
>
>How do you store 0 vs. nothing in a numeric field?

0 is nothing :)