Re: Fabian Pascal and RDBMS deficiencies in fully

On Fri, Jun 09, 2006 at 12:01:07PM -0400, A.M. wrote:
> So you should normalize and add relations to represent the state
> adequately. NULL doesn't give you enough information anyway- does NULL in
> a birthday header mean "no birthday", "n/a" (a business doesn't have a
> birthday), "not born yet", etc... Using real data, you can represent any
> of these states.

What's makes you think I'm interested in storing the distinctions?
Either I know the birthday or I don't. If I want to work out why I
don't know it, yeah, it's worth storing the state. There are other ways
of finding that out (for example you can readily tell if you're looking
at a business and I know the system doesn't have people that aren't
born yet). But mostly I just need to track that it's not known.

Have a nice day,
--
Martijn van Oosterhout <kleptog(at)svana(dot)org> http://svana.org/kleptog/
> From each according to his ability. To each according to his ability to litigate.