>>>>>>>And if you don't define as what it is you will have problems.
>>>>>
>>>>>I'll only have problems if I allow it to exist.
>>>>>There are no NULLS in any column in any row in any table I've ever designed and created, period.
>>>>>If I run into them in other people's data, I mutter the unutterable and deal with them.
>>>>
>>>>Whatever the merits or demerits my suggestion would be that hired gun programmers learn to deal with databases like the ones you describe. In my experience they are ubiquitous and one needs to be able to program against them and submit scripts that honor the prohibition against nulls.
>>>>
>>>>I know that in the hundreds of tables I deal with every day in dozens of databases in a fairly large enterprise there are no null columns in production, period.
>>>
>>>Interesting. This being the very large financial institution you have mentioned?
>>
>>Yes. Dow Jones Indexes. Not actually a financial institution but a large international data collection, analysis and reporting service.
>
>Hmmm, maybe that's why the economy sucks so bad. lol
Hey, we don't make the news, we just report it ( and sell the data <g> )
Charles Hankey
Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.
- Thomas Hardy
Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
-- T. S. Eliot
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
- Ben Franklin
Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
