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>My question, though, was how can you tell the user wants to change the field to a null vs just spaces? Do you need the distinction? If not, padding the property with spaces will work, and you can just change it to null before you update the back end.

Ah, I see what you are asking, and it sparks off a bit of introspection on my part.(oh no!).

This application is so new, that I don't have any users for it yet. Given that the users at my company wouldn't know a NULL value from a hole in the ground, much less why they would ever want to enter it into a field, this begins to make a case for not having these occur in the tables at all. Instead, reasonable default values for the corresponding data types such as zeroes and blank strings could be used for fields.

I just happened to stumble onto this nasty behavior because of default NULL values in some tables I am working with, which were designed by contractors who are since long-gone, and I want to make it stop. :) Not that I have a conceptual problem with null values themselves.

Short Version of that gobbledegook: 'Hmm. Those are causing a weird, nasty side-effect, and maybe I will just get rid of them' :)

Thanks,
Jim