Re: Null and Void() - Or, Abandon All Hope Ye Who allow

--- Berend Tober <btober(at)seaworthysys(dot)com> wrote:

> Florian G. Pflug wrote:
> > dananrg(at)yahoo(dot)com wrote:
> >
> >> Date and Pascal hate nulls.
> >
> > ...the functions described by those functional
> dependencies are
> > not required to be defined for every possible
> value - let's say you have
> > a function dependency A -> B - meaning that
> whenever you know the value
> > of column A, then there is _at_most_ one value
> for column BNormalization
> > basically tells you to model that function
> dependency as a
> > table containing fields A and B, and make A the
> primary key.
> >
> > Now, if there is no B for a specific value of A,
> then this table will
> > just not contain a record for this value of A.
> But if you allow
> > NULL-values, then suddently there are _two_
> different ways to express
> > "I don't know what B is for this A". You could
> either have a record with
> > the A-value in question, and with B null, or you
> could have _no_ record
> > with the A-value in question.
> >
>
> But in the former case, you affirm the existence and
> your knowledge of
> the second A-value; in the latter case you affirm
> ignorance of the
> second A-value. The two-column example may be useful
> for theoretical
> discussion, but in practise likely more columns
> exist so that NULL can
> represent incomplete data that may be determined
> later for a particular
> row when you still need to commit the column values
> already known. For
> instance, in response to customer demands, it may be
> required that a new
> employee begins work on projects right away, even
> though we have only
> basic identifying information, like say, their name.
> This gives us
> enough to create a new employee row, start recording
> their labor hours
> worked for billing purposes, and to cut checks for
> travel expenses. We
> eventually need date of birth, social security
> number, and other
> information, but as a practical matter those columns
> can certainly be
> committed NULL initially.
>
> Regards,
> Berend Tober
> 860-767-0700 x118
>

Null values should be allowed for any information that
may not be known at the time of data entry. However,
any data field that falls into this category should
not be required to define the relationships between
tables. This is a case where the database design must
reflect the limitations of operational processes.

Andrew Gould