I agree Mark but I'm supporting a 3rd party app which of course I don't have the code to so I can't make any structural changes.
I'm fully aware of the problems nullable columns present. Even to somebody like me who is well aware of the issues, I sometimes forget about a column having null values when writing my queries. I do like the "As Nullable(Of DateTime)" capabilities we now have. -----Original Message----- From: Discussion of advanced .NET topics. [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Marc Brooks Sent: Thursday, September 06, 2007 11:59 AM To: ADVANCED-DOTNET@DISCUSS.DEVELOP.COM Subject: Re: [ADVANCED-DOTNET] Null dates in 2005 > I've always done something like below to handle dates that can be null > in the DB. Was curious if they (MS) every got around to coming up with > a date data-type that can accept null values. Is there a better way? Don't use NULL dates... it makes all the SQL prone to errors (since comparing anything against NULL is false). Rather, decide what sentinal date value "represents" not-known in the database an use that... for example, use 9999-12-31 23:59:59.997 as the sentinal for date of death and you'll never blow a "is he allive" query... Another voice: http://weblogs.sqlteam.com/mladenp/archive/2007/03/14/60134.aspx -- "Any man who carries a hyphen with him carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic whenever he gets ready." Woodrow Wilson Marc C. Brooks http://musingmarc.blogspot.com =================================== This list is hosted by DevelopMentor http://www.develop.com View archives and manage your subscription(s) at http://discuss.develop.com =================================== This list is hosted by DevelopMentor® http://www.develop.com View archives and manage your subscription(s) at http://discuss.develop.com
